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Measuring and Modelling Soil Carbon Stocks and Stock Changes in Livestock Production Systems Guidelines for Assessment

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Measuring and Modelling Soil Carbon Stocks and Stock Changes in Livestock Production Systems Guidelines for Assessment http://www.fao.org/partnerships/leap VERSION 1 Measuring and modelling soil carbon stocks and stock changes in livestock production systems Guidelines for assessment CA000EN/0/00.19 VERSION 1 Measuring and modelling soil carbon stocks and stock changes in livestock production systems Guidelines for assessment FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Rome, 2019 Recommended Citation FAO. 2019. Measuring and modelling soil carbon stocks and stock changes in livestock production systems: Guidelines for assessment (Version 1). Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership. Rome, FAO. 170 pp. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. The LEAP guidelines are subject to continuous updates. Make sure to use the latest version by visiting http://www.fao.org/partnerships/leap/publications/en/ The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of FAO. ISBN 978-92-5-131408-1 © FAO, 2019 Some rights reserved. This work is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo/legalcode/legalcode). Under the terms of this licence, this work may be copied, redistributed and adapted for non-commercial purposes, provided that the work is appropriately cited. In any use of this work, there should be no suggestion that FAO endorses any specific organization, products or services. The use of the FAO logo is not permitted. If the work is adapted, then it must be licensed under the same or equivalent Creative Commons licence. If a translation of this work is created, it must include the following disclaimer along with the required citation: “This translation was not created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this translation. The original [Language] edition shall be the authoritative edition. Disputes arising under the licence that cannot be settled amicably will be resolved by mediation and arbitration as described in Article 8 of the licence except as otherwise provided herein. The applicable mediation rules will be the mediation rules of the World Intellectual Property Organization http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/mediation/rules and any arbitration will be conducted in accordance with the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Third-party materials. Users wishing to reuse material from this work that is attributed to a third party, such as tables, figures or images, are responsible for determining whether permission is needed for that reuse and for obtaining permission from the copyright holder. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party- owned component in the work rests solely with the user. Sales, rights and licensing. FAO information products are available on the FAO website (www.fao.org/ publications) and can be purchased through [email protected]. Requests for commercial use should be submitted via: www.fao.org/contact-us/licence-request. Queries regarding rights and licensing should be submitted to: [email protected]. Photo cover: ©FAO/Vegard Martinsen Contents Forward vi Acknowledgements viii Multi-step review process xii Sponsors, advisors and networking xiii Abbreviations and acronyms xiv Glossary xv Executive summary xviii 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Objectives and intended users 1 1.2 Scope 1 1.2.1 Land use systems 2 1.2.2 Soil carbon 2 1.3 Soil organic matter and soil organic carbon 2 1.4 Livestock systems and soil organic carbon 3 1.5 Land use change, land management and soil organic carbon stocks 8 2. DETERMINATION OF SOIL ORGANIC CARBON STOCKS 9 2.1 Introduction: The need to measure soil organic carbon stocks 9 2.2 Planning the sampling 11 2.2.1 Site heterogeneity and stratification 11 2.2.2 Sampling strategies 14 2.2.3 Compositing 17 2.2.4 Sampling depth 17 2.3 Errors and uncertainties 19 2.4 Soil processing and analysis 22 2.4.1 Drying, grinding, sieving, homogenizing and archiving 22 2.4.2 Bulk density 24 2.4.3 Coarse fraction of belowground organic carbon 29 2.4.4 Inorganic carbon 29 2.5 Analytical methods for total soil organic carbon determination 30 2.5.1 Dry combustion method 31 2- 2.5.2 Wet digestion/oxidation of organic carbon compounds by dichromate ions (Cr2O7 ) 31 2.5.3 Loss-on-ignition method 32 2.5.4 Spectroscopic techniques for soil organic carbon determination 33 3. MONITORING SOIL ORGANIC CARBON STOCK CHANGES – REPEATED MEASUREMENTS AGAINST A BASE PERIOD, AND MEASUREMENTS AGAINST A BUSINESS-AS-USUAL BASELINE 37 3.1 Planning and implementing a monitoring strategy for soil organic carbon stock change 37 3.2 Introduction to soil organic carbon stock change assessment by measuring against a baseline 38 3.2.1 Sources of error and bias in soil organic carbon stock change monitoring 40 iii 3.3 Sample size 40 3.3.1 Pre-sampling for soil organic carbon stocks and variability to guide sample size 40 3.3.2 Using minimum detectable difference to determine sample size 41 3.4 Sampling frequency 45 3.5 Calculating soil organic carbon stock change 46 3.5.1 Equivalent soil mass 46 3.5.2 Calculating soil organic carbon stock changes 48 4. DATA MANAGEMENT AND REPORTING 55 4.1 Handling data 55 4.1.1 Data gathering 55 4.1.2 Data processing 56 4.1.3 Data storage and retrieval 56 4.1.4 Data quality control 57 4.2 Reporting results 58 5. MONITORING SOIL ORGANIC CARBON CHANGES – NET BALANCE OF ATMOSPHERIC CARBON FLUXES 59 6. MODELLING SOIL ORGANIC CARBON CHANGES 63 6.1 Introduction 63 6.1.1 What is modelling and who is it intended for: decision support and reporting 63 6.2 The different modelling approaches 64 6.2.1 Level 1. Empirical models 65 6.2.2 Level 2. Soil process models 68 6.2.3 Level 3. Ecosystem models 70 6.3 Deciding on the approach 71 6.3.1 Technical capacity and activity data 74 6.4 Implementation 75 6.4.1 Data availability 75 6.4.2 Initialization of the model 77 6.4.3 Validation of results 78 6.5 Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis 81 6.5.1 Sensitivity and uncertainty - Introduction 81 6.5.2 Sensitivity analysis 83 6.5.3 Calibration 85 6.5.4 Uncertainty estimates from calibration and validation 85 6.5.5 Model prediction uncertainty 85 6.5.6 General guidance 86 7. SPATIAL INTERPRETATION AND UPSCALING OF SOC 89 7.1 Introduction 89 7.2 Sampling for spatial interpolation 90 7.3 Interpolating methods for soil organic carbon predictions 92 7.4 Geostatistics 94 7.5 Digital Soil Mapping 99 7.6 Practical application of interpolation techniques 101 iv 8. INTEGRATING CHANGES IN SOIL ORGANIC CARBON INTO LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT 103 8.1 Introduction 103 8.2 Implications of including SOC stock changes in LCA 105 8.2.1 System boundaries and cut-off criteria 105 8.2.2 Representativeness and appropriateness of LCI data (SOC data or model) 106 8.2.3 Types, quality and sources of required data and information 106 8.2.4 Comparisons between systems 106 8.2.5 Identifying critical review needs 107 8.2.6 Emerging reporting requirements 107 APPENDICES 109 APPENDIX 1 111 TECHNICAL INFORMATION ON MODEL INITIALIZATION 111 Initialisation Challenges and Approaches 111 Initialisation of soil pool sizes is less important for comparisons between two or more concurrent scenarios 113 Guidance for Initialisation 115 APPENDIX 2 117 TECHNICAL DETAILS OF MODEL CALIBRATION AND UNCERTAINTY EVALUATION USING MONTE CARLO APPROACHES 117 REFERENCES 119 v Foreword These guidelines are a product of the Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership, a multi-stakeholder initiative whose goal is to improve the environmental sustainability of livestock supply chains through better methods, metrics and data. The aim of the methodology developed in these guidelines is to introduce a har- monized international approach for measuring and modelling soil carbon stocks and stock changes from grasslands and rangelands so that environmental assessments of livestock supply chains take also into consideration carbon sequestration or losses. The methodology strives to increase understanding of carbon sequestration and to facilitate improvement of livestock systems’ environmental performance. While representing a signicant contributor to human-induced GHG emissions, the livestock sector has the potential to reduce the sector’s emissions through soil carbon sequestration in grasslands and rangelands, which cover circa 70% of the global agricultural land. Carbon sequestration corresponds to an increase in the stock of soil carbon, which can be measured at farm level or estimated in different ways from balances of carbon uxes. This work aimed at building consensus for measuring and modelling soil carbon stock changes in order to correctly report carbon sequestration. Overlooking or miscounting carbon sequestration has often resulted in misinterpretation of the en- vironmental footprint of livestock products and also in setting sustainable dietary recommendations. Furthermore, measuring soil carbon stock changes is essential to monitor progress towards national targets set in the context of both the Paris Agreement’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
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