Measuring Soil Carbon Under Cap-and-Trade: Accurate, Affordable Field Verification Using Veris Spectroscopic Sensors

Measuring changes in soil carbon levels is a difficult task. Uncertainty about soil carbon measurement, monitoring, and verification is affecting agriculture’s role as an offset provider under a cap-and-trade program. There is ample evidence that skepticism is warranted. Soil carbon varies significantly at short distances—the carbon difference between samples collected within a meter can easily be larger than the anticipated ten-year sequestration amount. Purchasers of carbon offsets must be assured that carbon changes are real, and not just an artifact of sampling locations. Without accurate information, the discount due to uncertainty will be sizeable. To complicate matters further, the measurements must include the soil profile, to a depth of at least 60 cm, making this a three-dimensional effort.