Carbon Farming CE developed a Monitoring Strategy Roadmap to support the assessment of soil condition and carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. The approach combines complementary methods that can be applied at different levels of detail, depending on the purpose, available resources and expertise.
The monitoring approach covers three levels:
- Visual Soil Assessment (VSA) – a practical field-based approach for evaluating soil condition;
- soil carbon stock assessment – supporting the quantification and monitoring of carbon stored in soil; and
- advanced soil quality assessment – including soil enzymatic activities and the Soil Quality Index (SQI).
By combining approaches of different complexity, the roadmap provides a basis for soil carbon and soil quality monitoring that can support farmers, agricultural advisors, researchers and other practitioners in selecting appropriate assessment methods.