Remote-C project in a nutshell: Scaling soil C sequestration in croplands with operational remote sensing-based MRV tools

Carbon farming is one of agriculture's answers to climate change and includes agricultural practices able to capture and store C in soils as soil organic carbon (SOC). Unlocking the potential for Carbon farming to scale relies on the establishment of robust protocols to monitor, report, and verify (MRV) changes in SOC stocks. Different MRV protocols are available in the voluntary C market, exploiting different approaches to quantify C removal. Capturing spatial and temporal variability of SOC can be challenging since SOC values vary substantially over space and changes occur slowly through time. Some of these issues can be tackled indeed by “hybrid approaches”, i.e. by combining remote sensing (RS) and process-based models with direct field measurements to verify model predictions. In this context, project Remote-C, funded by the Italian Research Ministry, aims at developing an approach to estimate changes in SOC thanks to a spatialized version of Roth-C model fed by RS products and spectroscopic readings from proximal soil sensors. The main goal is to understand if remote and proximal sensing are added values in delivering timely and spatially accurate inputs to reduce the uncertainty of soil C model. Overall project scheme is given in an attached file. To develop and test the operating MRV tools addressed in Remote-C the consortium will exploit existing test sites made available by 2 EU-funded projects (PRIMA - Farms4Climate and H2020 - ClieNFarms). These farms are pioneers in testing carbon farming solutions eligible for payment schemes. RS data will be exploited to i) map biophysical variables of crops from multispectral data; ii) characterize crop residues and iii) detect tillage operations with SAR data. These variables will be ingested by a light-use efficiency model (e.g. SAFY) and outputs from the crop model and RS data will be exploited by a spatial modeling toolbox based on the Roth-C model. The project is in its early stages and the workshop could be a suitable arena to discuss the proposed approach.