Attached below is a simple draft greenhouse gas calculator for grass and cattle producers, in Microsoft Excel format. This calculator differs from many in that it recognizes that soil, and soil biology, is a principal factor influencing the composition of the atmosphere. To judge or quantify such effects, site-specific measurements are needed, such as changes in soil carbon levels over time.

The promise of a calculator is that you can assess your consumption of resources, or your impact, and presumably be motivated to reduce it. However, the world is not just an input-output system, or collection of sinks and sources. There are complex interdependencies, flows, and cycles. When people say that it takes a village to raise a child, they do not mean that a village is destroyed for every child raised. There can be synergy, mutual benefit. Likewise for the water, solar energy, and carbon that goes into life processes. They are not destroyed.

However, there seems to be popular demand, and this draft calculator is a response to that demand, and an effort to enlarge perceptions of the interdependencies.

For most grass-based cattle producers, the major fluxes of greenhouse gases are likely to be methane from enteric fermentation, and changes in soil carbon levels.

The calculator comes preloaded with fictitious figures based on a 10,000 acre property, with 600 cow-calf pairs, that ships 800-pound yearlings.

Suggestions welcome.

Choose create content, map instance.

1. Name the project.

2. Select the Template type: is this an instance of carbon gain, loss, or no change?

3. Description: summarize. USE HTML tags to place a photo (copy code from other examples), separate paragraphs, and include links. Links to published papers should have as their text, the short title of the journal, issue, year, pages.

4. Carbon change in T C per ha per yr, or as a percentage per year to a given depth in cm. To calculate the percentage:

(1 - (percent now/percent then ^ years ^ -1))*100

e.g. if carbon percentage went from .55 to 1.4 in 14 years, 1.4/.55 = 2.545. The 14th root of this can be found on most scientific calculators by raising 2.545 to the 1/14 power, which is 1.069. Less 1, times 100 this gives 6.9% increase per year. Annual carbon loss percentages can be calculated similarly.

5. Coordinates: Click on Location tab to bring in map. Or enter, decimal format, LONGITUDE FIRST, e.g. -103.36453,38.495857

We are embarking on a mapping project for measured changes in soil carbon content over time. The purpose is not to aggregate "offsets" or to make broad predictions, but to show what's possible as verified by actual measurements.

There are many stories that are told about soil carbon, and what its possibilities are. Much conversation on this topic has substituted assumptions for observations. Repeated measurements at the same location appear to be rare.

There are only a few data points so far and we hope to collect, review, and add data as we can. If you have data you would like to include, or can suggest good data, please contact us, info at soilcarboncoalition dot org, or you may start with a data form attached below.

Carbon gains and losses are expressed in metric tons of carbon (not carbon dioxide) per hectare per year, or as annual percentage increase where bulk density measurements have not been taken.

The map

You may use the Google Earth version if you have Google Earth installed.

Otherwise use the Google Maps version.

The data points

You may view the data points in page format here, and even subscribe to an RSS feed.

Conversions

To convert carbon to CO₂, multiply by 3.67. For CO₂ to C, multiply by .273. (The molecular weight of CO₂ is 16 for each oxygen atom, and 12 for the carbon atom, so the ratio of CO₂ to C is 44:12.)

To convert hectares to acres, multiply by 2.47. To convert acres to hectares, multiply by .404.

To convert metric tons C per hectare to metric tons CO₂ per acre, multiply by 1.52. To convert tons CO₂ per acre to tons C per hectare, multiply by .658.

In the Sacramento Delta of California, a freshwater tidal marsh thick with tules and other marsh vegetation formed carbon-rich peat soils 60 feet deep in places. In the 1870s, farmers began to build dikes, drain the marshes, burn the tules, and farm the peat soils.

With the peat exposed to air, it oxidized rapidly. The soil surface descended below sea level, sometimes by inches per year. The levees were reinforced, and the water table lowered some more by pumping, so that farming could continue. By the 1990s the soil surface on some of these peat lands was down to 15, 20, and even 25 feet below sea level. The biological crater left by the oxidation of peat soils in the Delta had grown huge, about the size of the debris flow from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.

If you double the height of a levee or dike, you quadruple the water pressure on it. If or when these levees fail, salt water from San Francisco Bay will fill the crater, compromising the water supplies for about two-thirds of California, including much of the irrigated agriculture of the central valley.

About ten years ago the US Geological Survey began a small experiment to see if this loss due to oxidation could be reversed. On Twitchell Island, about 15 feet below sea level, they flooded the land shallowly, and put in some clumps of tules and cattails. As the plants grew, they raised the water level. After ten years, this experiment has built two feet of peat soils that you can stand on, and recording a carbon accrual of 10 metric tons C per ha per year.

It is often said that you can't unscramble an egg. An egg has a wholeness or integrity, a poised arrangement of membranes and layers. You cannot reverse the breaking, mixing, and cooking, even with the most advanced technology and equipment.

But a hen can. Feed her a scrambled egg or two, and she can lay a new, whole egg. It may not be instant, but expensive technology is not required. If the egg is fertile, it can become a new hen, who can unscramble more eggs, and so on.

It's important to remember the relationship here, and who has the power. The hen wants to eat it, and produce a new egg, for reasons that are hers, not ours. Like all the biosphere's organisms, she is self-motivated. Trying to force her may cause problems for both her and us. If we want the egg unscrambled, we invite her.

We've got a scrambled egg situation on a global scale: biodiversity loss, extensive land degradation, water shortages, acidifying oceans, and too much heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere. But we've framed it in such a way that the hen isn't even in the picture.

Of all these large problems, it was perhaps inevitable that carbon in the atmosphere took center stage in the 1970s and after. The data about rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were clear. Physical sciences were dominant in climate questions, and the scope and variability of the biological carbon cycle were only beginning to emerge.

That transparent carbon dioxide gas absorbed and emitted long-wave radiation, thus trapping heat, had been discovered in the 1800s. By the 1960s it was clear that atmospheric carbon dioxide was increasing steadily. But it took another generation, as well as a massive and varied accumulation of evidence, before most scientists and the public began to accept the possibility that climate could change as a result of human activities, and that fossil fuel burning was the main driver.

Skeptics of anthropogenic global warming often attribute the power to change climate to solar output (astrophysics).

Most climate activists place the power for change with fossil fuel emissions (technology). But more are now recognizing that changing technology, such as emissions reductions, lacks near-term leverage on the whole system and on atmospheric carbon. Being proactive won't help much, because the system is too narrowly defined.

Reflecting more solar energy into space, or air capture of carbon using technology, is attractive to some because it corresponds to a widespread technical orientation, as well as frustration or impatience with the social, political, and leverage issues around emissions reductions. But these "geoengineering" possibilities are consistently accused of being band-aids. They do not address the causes of climate change, or the buildup of atmospheric carbon and other greenhouse gases.

The earth system, such as the biological carbon cycle, has been invisible or inscrutable as a source of change. But many are beginning to see the influence or potential influence of soil carbon or peat carbon, and forest carbon, and the tremendous power of carbon cycling.

We do not influence the biological carbon cycle as directly as we influence coal burning, but our influence is strong and immediate--though not as predictable and mechanical as international agreements, markets, or policy approaches seem to demand. The remaining divisions in science, for example into biological and physical sciences, haven't helped us understand the power of carbon cycling.

The Soil Carbon Challenge, or World Carbon Cup, is an international prize competition to see how fast land managers can turn atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter. We're actively seeking partnerships and suggestions.

The Challenge is also an observatory, analogous to Keeling's observatory for atmospheric carbon concentrations on Mauna Loa which developed the iconic Keeling curve of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958. This "observatory" is dispersed over the world's soils, focusing on human management of the carbon cycle, via long-term monitoring of soil carbon.

Recognizing that the biological carbon cycle in a field or landscape has large variability over time, and that human decisions have an enormous impact on how this carbon cycle functions, let's seek out this variability, measure it accurately, and learn from it on a case-by-case basis.

Soil organic carbon has value above and beyond the needs of present or future carbon markets for offsets to fossil fuel consumption. The Challenge is not an offset market scheme, or a blueprint for particular strategies or practices. The greatest leverage (financial, social, and ecological) can be obtained through a monitored competition, where land managers (brought together by local groups) choose the strategies they will implement.

Scenario: One-page quick overview of what it's about.

Unscrambling the egg: Why we need a new policy model to deal with the "scrambled egg" of the biosphere.

Description of the prize competition; some background; why prize competitions can change the questions

Can policy build soil carbon?

The elevator discussion

A design draft

If you're still looking for more, try the links on the right hand side of the page.

The City of Wichita, Kansas is now paying farmers in one of its watershed areas $100 an acre to put in grass. This is an incentive handled by the Cheney Lake Watershed to improve water quality for the city by working with watershed landowners.

This is yet another example of local policy leadership on water cycling, and an example of ecosystem services payments where cost and benefit are nearby. The article quoted below is by Lisa French.

http://www.cheneylakewatershed.org/newsletter/2009-Summer.pdf

"Like most farmers, David Friesen has a few acres of cropland that are always difficult to farm. In David’s case, his field near the Ninnescah River has a tendency to stay wet. Getting a crop planted and harvesting the crop are both a challenge. With a new program offered by the Cheney Lake Watershed, David is going to be paid $100/acre to seed a little more than 5 acres to Eastern gamagrass for hay or grazing. As David says, “It looks like it’s a no-brainer.”

"The Cheney Lake Watershed is now offering one-time incentive payments of $100/acre, funded by the City of Wichita, for crop acres seeded to permanent vegetation. The species used depend on the producer’s goals, soil types, and site condition. Eligible land must have five years of cropping history and must be located within the watershed east of Highway 14. Land in this area is more likely to contribute sediment to Cheney Reservoir than other areas of the watershed.

Tony Lovell and Bruce Ward from Australia made a presentation about grassland carbon to the Manchester Report, a project of the Guardian newspaper in the UK. They report that it was enthusiastically received, and was new information to many.

The Manchester report is running a poll for the top 10 solutions to climate change. You can vote here before July 23, and no registration is necessary:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/poll/2009/jul/08/manchester-report...

see a piece of Tony's presentation here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/13/manchester-report-gras...

An international prize competition to see how fast land managers can turn atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter. Open to any land manager, or group of land managers.

The purpose of the Challenge is to highlight in a thorough, localized, and public way the opportunity and the possibilities for turning atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter, and to get it happening.

An entry consists of a specific parcel of land, with geolocated boundaries (or shapefile), between 0.20 and 10 ha in area, whose perimeter may not exceed that of a circle three times the parcel's area.

The Challenge runs for 10 years. Entries in 2009 will be judged in 2015 and final awards made 2019. The World Carbon Cup will go to the land manager who sequesters the most tons of C per hectare per year at the end of 10 years. There will be an additional prize for percentage increase. Baseline survey at year 0, remonitor at years 3, 6, and 10.

Entry fee is US$2000, plus travel expenses for a Monitor. This covers your baseline or starter monitoring. (Additional nearby entry parcels can be added at a discount.)

The Soil Carbon Coalition can offer help in finding sponsorships for the entry fee, including some written, online, and video resources to highlight the benefits and the opportunity of building soil organic matter, as well as methods for increasing it, and a list of organizations and local government agencies with specific interests in your area.

To keep your entry in the contest, remonitoring is required at 3 years, 6 years, and 10 years. Each monitoring is also $2000, plus travel expenses for a Monitor. To keep your entry viable, you must request additional monitoring at these intervals, and find sponsorship funding for it if necessary.

Entries baselined in 2009 will be scheduled for remonitoring in 2012, 2015, and 2019. Each calendar year, a different "race" will be started. Intermediate prizes will be awarded based on the 6-year monitoring.