Stuart Green
Senior Research Officer, Teagasc
Stuart is the remote sensing specialist in the spatial analysis department in Teagasc. His main research interest is in using terrestrial earth observation technologies to understand issues important to rural Ireland and Irish agriculture. He has produced many nationally important data sets around land cover maps, soil maps and new methods for estimating grass growth remotely. Stuart has extensive experience managing research projects and has collaborated with several third-level institutes. He established the Irish earth observation symposium in 2007 and it’s now an annual event with over 150 attendees.
Farm carbon stocks monitoring, reporting and verification
Measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), are the tools that allow actions by farmers to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase carbon (C) sequestration to be turned into trusted impacts. Without measurement, the size of the impact will not be known; without reporting, the source of the impact will be unrecognised and without verification the measured, reported impact will not be trusted.
MRV can be done at national statistical scale for inventory reporting or it can be done at the farm level: scaling up for national inventory or staying at the farm gate for C farming or credits. MRV can come from data provided by the farmer or producer or they can acquired remotely using sensor technology. MRV approaches are particularly important with respect to C stocks on the farm – how much carbon is already stored in the soil and in hedgerows, value and credit will only flow from an increase in these stocks.
The C stocks can increase due to actions being taken by the farmer (e.g. straw incorporation), and the measurement and verification of these actions is sufficient for reporting. This would be known as an action based approach to carbon farming. The second approach would be results based – demonstrating that a specified increase carbons stocks has been achieved. The MRV methods for results based schemes rely on measuring or modelling of carbon stocks before and after the period over which the scheme was to be run.
Read the full paper Farm carbon stocks monitoring reporting and verification (PDF)