Module 3: Soil Organic Carbon
Our tour of negative emissions technologies begins with a completely biological solution: by adopting certain farming practices (known as regenerative agriculture), farmers can improve soil quality, increasing the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil and improving crop growth and farm health. We’ll look at what those practices are, why implementing them may be challenging, and how much carbon we can ultimately remove this way.
High Flyer
1. Deep Dive - Agricultural Soil Carbon
Carbon 180
Carbon 180 produces short explainer articles about lots of different carbon removal methods that will pop up throughout the course. Not long, but covers a lot from costs to ecosystem impacts to deployment.
Article - 15 min
2. How well does soil actually store carbon?
Catalyst Podcast
An overview of the soil carbon space, the various practices and pathways involved, and our current scientific understanding.
Podcast - 36 min
Climate Student
3. The Fuzzy Math of Soil Carbon Markets
Ambrook Research
This article describes a few of the largest soil carbon credit providers, such as Indigo Ag, and the problems they've been recently facing in enrolling farmers. It also reinforces some soil carbon basics.
Article - 20 min
4. The dirt on soil carbon sequestration
Climate Tech VC
A high level, slightly outdated but still very helpful map of the soil organic carbon market space.
Article - 10 min
5. The dirt on soil carbon credits
Catalyst Podcast
A podcast featuring Freya from CarbonPlan, discussing the challenges with quantifying soil carbon and in creating high quality soil credits.
Podcast - 43 min
6. Soil carbon is a valuable resource, but all soil carbon is not created equal
The Conversation
It's important in discussions about soil organic carbon (SOC) to have an understanding of the two different types of soil carbon: minerally associated organic carbon and particulate organic carbon.
Article - 10 min
7. Depth matters for soil carbon accounting
CarbonPlan
Learn about a core measurement challenge for soil carbon, that being the differences in how SOC levels might be changing at different depths in response to particular farm practice changes.
Article - 20 min
8. A buyer’s guide to soil carbon offsets
CarbonPlan
Different soil carbon credits are verifier under different protocols that prescribe standards for how the credit is created and measured. CarbonPlan put together this review of lots of different soil carbon protocols that's worth a read if you're interested in the space.
Article - 15 min
9. A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change
Quanta Magazine
An old paradigm in soil science about humus is driving some plans to increase the durable fraction of carbon in soil. This article describes changes in our soil science understanding over the last decade that show why this might be challenging.
Article - 20 min
Climate Master
10. Soil organic carbon: quantifying and incentivizing its accrual
Christophe Jospe
In order for soil carbon projects to participate in carbon markets, we need a way to determine how much carbon is actually being sequestered in the soil over time. There are a few different ways of approaching this, each with different accuracy and scalability. Christophe gives a good summary here.
Article - 20 min
Carbon180
Carbon180 works on United States federal policy, and put out this report in 2022 as their plan to support SOC scientific research and expansion.
Report - 90 min
12. Barriers For Farmers & Ranchers To Adopt Regenerative Ag Practices In The US
Jennifer O’Connor
This 200 page whopper of a report contains everything you ever wanted to know about why farmers are hesitant to transition to regenerative agriculture and all of the groups that are working to change that. Spinkled throughout are insightful interviews from farmers themselves and key takeaways on the levers for change. Probably don't read the whole thing, but check out interesting sections and leave this open for future reference.
Report - 120+ min