Step 3 - After baseline soil sampling is completed, the farmer can begin implementing management activities to build soil carbon.
To be eligible under the ACCU Scheme, soil carbon projects must implement new or materially different management to build soil carbon. The methodology outlines eligible and ineligible land management activities to build soil carbon.
The CER regulations require soil carbon projects to have a Land Management Strategy (LMS) submitted with the project registration. AgriProve designs projects for success to maximise Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU) generation. AgriProve has developed effective LMSs for both grazing and broadacre cropping and horticulture, based on the eligible strategies. AgriProve works with you to optimise the management strategy for your property, based on the characteristics of your land, your crops and your farming approach.
AgriProve also monitors progress throughout the project using real-time satellite data. This provides the evidence of increased soil carbon that is required to generate ACCUs. It also ensures that your aims are being achieved and allows farmers to continually adjust their management to have the highest impact. This approach to the LMS enables flexible management of the farm over the 30-year life of the project, without imposing controls on management activities (apart from ineligible or restricted activities).
Land Management Strategy – grazing
AgriProve’s LMS for grazing systems gives farmers the option of 4 eligible land management activities:
- applying nutrients to the land in the form of a synthetic or nonsynthetic fertiliser to address a material deficiency
- re-establishing or rejuvenating a pasture by seeding
- establishing, and permanently maintaining, a pasture where there was previously no pasture, such as on cropland or bare fallow
- altering the stocking rate, or duration or intensity of grazing.
AgriProve assesses soil carbon development in grazing enterprises by using fractional groundcover satellite data. Fractional groundcover data is derived from high-resolution multispectral imagery acquired by the Landsat and Sentinel satellite systems. This data provides the percentage of fractional groundcover at an individual pixel scale (10– 30 m), divided into 3 fractions: green vegetation (leaves and grass), brown vegetation (branches, dead leaf litter or hay), and bare ground (soil or rock). This allows you to identify the areas that are being grazed heavily or areas being underused for grazing purposes. A fractional groundcover baseline condition report for the project area is generated over a 5-year baseline period. This is used as a benchmark to monitor changes in fractional groundcover that will indicate changes in soil carbon. Fractional groundcover data provides a consistent set of land condition metrics for historical analysis, and is ‘future proofed’ across current and future satellite platforms. AgriProve measures fractional groundcover at least every 5 years.
Land Management Strategy – broadacre cropping and horticulture
AgriProve’s LMS for broadacre cropping and horticulture systems gives farmers the option of 7 eligible land management activities:
- using mechanical means to add or redistribute soil through the soil profile
- applying lime to remediate acid soils
- applying gypsum to remediate sodic or magnesic soils
- undertaking new irrigation
- retaining stubble after a crop is harvested
- converting from intensive tillage practices to reduced-or no-tillage practices
- modifying landscape or landform features to remediate land.
AgriProve assesses soil carbon development in broadacre cropping and horticulture enterprises by assessing changes in chlorophyll levels. Chlorophyll is the green pigment present in all green plants. Increased chlorophyll concentration indicates an increased potential for crop yield and for soil carbon. To measure chlorophyll levels, AgriProve LMS uses a method called ‘normalised difference red edge’ (NDRE). This method is based on the percentage of reflectance and absorbance of ‘red edge’ light bands from the leaf surface, from satellite data. A chlorophyll baseline condition report for the project area is generated over a 5-year baseline period, identifying the average, cumulative and standard deviation of seasonal chlorophyll concentration over the past 5 years. Farmers commit to implementing one or more of the eligible land management activities to increase plant chlorophyll production and improve soil carbon levels. AgriProve retrieves satellite data updates during each growing season as an accurate decision-making tool to guide management decisions that will increase plant productivity against the baseline.
