The aim of this paper is to provide a new synthesis focused on grassland ecosystems and soil carbon stock sensitivity to management and land use changes: grazing, species composition, and mineral nutrient availability. The synthesis confirms earlier conclusions that improved grazing management, fertilization, sowing legumes and improved grass species, irrigation, and conversion from cultivation all tend to lead to increased soil carbon.
Conant R, Cerri C, Osborne B, Paustian K
2017
Ecological Applications
This method is applicable to grazing land but focuses on impacts to soil carbon. It quantifies reduction and removal of GHG emissions from changes toward more sustainable densities of grazing animals and frequency of prescribed fires.
Verified Carbon Standard
2015
This method is applicable to grazing land but focuses on impacts to soil carbon. It provides procedures to estimate GHG emission reductions with the adoption of SGM in semi-arid regions.
Verified Carbon Standard
2014
American Carbon Registry (ACR), approved GHG offset methodology for Grazing Land and Livestock Management (GLLM) developed by Winrock International. This methodology is applicable for global dairy and beef production, with mainly focusing on five primary GHG sources, sinks and reservoirs (SSRs): fossil fuel emissions, enteric methane, manure methane, nitrous oxide from use of fertilizer, and biotic sequestration in biomass and soils.
American Carbon Registry
2014
The Cool Farm Tool is a farm-level GHG emissions calculator that integrates both crop and livestock systems by quantifying on-farm GHG and soil carbon sequestration. It allows farmers to evaluate different management systems to assess the impact on GHG emissions and has been adopted for use worldwide. Video demos provides a step-by-step tutorial for using the tool.
Cool Farm Alliance (CFA)
COMET-Farm is a farm-level carbon and greenhouse gas accounting system and calculator for the United States. It uses information on management practices on an operation together with spatially-explicit information on climate and soil conditions from USDA databases (which are provided automatically in the tool) to run a series of models that evaluate sources of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration. It is based on the methods described in the report Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory.
USDA/Colorado State University
The ICAT Agriculture Guidance provides methodological guidance for assessing the GHG impacts of agriculture policies that enable or incentivize mitigation practices or technologies that reduce emissions from enteric fermentation and increase soil carbon sequestration in pasture, grazing lands and croplands. It is part of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) series of guidance for assessing the impacts of policies and actions. This guidance is intended for use by policymakers and practitioners seeking to estimate GHG mitigation impacts in the context of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) development and implementation, national low carbon strategies, Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) and other mechanisms. The primary intended users are developing country governments and their partners who are implementing and assessing agriculture policies.
Initiative for Climate Action Transparency
2018
Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, Verra
