Tagged / crops

DEFRA call – Capturing cropland and grassland management impacts on soil carbon in the UK LULUCF inventory

Funding opportunities

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs invites applications for its capturing cropland and grassland management impacts on soil carbon in the UK land use, land use change and forestry inventory. Research is required to develop a framework for capturing cropland and grassland management impacts on soil carbon in the UK land use, land use change and forestry inventory and to populate this framework. The research is designed around three work packages:

•estimates of UK annual emissions and removals for cropland and grassland management activities which have the potential to change levels of soil carbon for 2010;

•back-casting annual emissions and removals to 1990 and forecasting annual emissions and removals to 2020 and 2050;

•calculating the mitigation and offset potential available through changing cropland and grassland management by 2020 and 2050.

Although the focus of this project is on management activities which have the potential to change levels of soil carbon other greenhouse gas emissions associated with these management activities will also need to be calculated if they are not already included within the agricultural inventory. Due to the nature of this project it is expected that the project team will include soil scientists, agricultural scientists, agronomists and economists. The project is to start 10 September 2012 and last for 18 months, ending 28 February 2014. SP 1113.

Closing date: 4pm, 31 July 12

Contact: luke.spadavecchia@defra.gsi.gov.uk

  The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

World Experts meet to determine future direction of soil carbon monitoring and reporting

A workshop organised by the BBSRC brought together top scientists from around the world to plan the future direction of standards and methodologies in the area of soil carbon monitoring and reporting. This will make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the role of soil in addressing climate change.
Outputs of the workshop will be a series of scientific papers outlining  the challenges and opportunities of soil carbon monitoring in the context of biomass production. This will help to inform sustainable management of changing land use, as well as any shift towards biomass crops within agriculture; contribute to the future direction of research in this area; and help to inform policy for sustainability. It is likely that opportunities will emerge from this work to improve the overall sustainability of bioenergy and an improved appreciation of the flux of carbon into and out of the soil will complement our increasing knowledge of the roles of genetics, physiology and agronomic traits of bioenergy crops.