Loma Rangier, Author at - Page 4 of 4

Grist – GRIST.org

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $1 billion effort this week to combat agriculture-based greenhouse gas emissions.

Through the new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, the USDA will offer funds to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to adopt practices that curb their climate pollution or sequester carbon dioxide. Grantees might reduce or eliminate tilling, which releases carbon into the air, for example, or plant trees on agricultural lands. Successful applicants will be given up to $100 million to implement their proposals.

Funds will come from the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation, which can borrow up to $30 billion annually from the U.S. Treasury to “stabilize, support, and protect farm income and practices.”

“This is about creating domestic markets that will provide American agriculture and forestry with the resources to do what they know to do best — to feed the world, while serving as great stewards of our land and water,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack as he unveiled the program at Lincoln University in Missouri.

As of 2019, agriculture accounted for one-tenth of the U.S.’s annual climate pollution, so cleaning up the sector is critical for hitting the Biden administration’s emissions reduction targets. Last year, President Joe Biden promised to slash economy-wide emissions 50 percent below 2005 values by 2030.

In addition to helping the country slash emissions, some of the projects eligible for grants under the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities may also help temper the growing risk of climate change for U.S. food producers. According to research from Stanford University, climate change has already caused some $27 billion in crop insurance losses from 1991 to 2017, and experts predict those losses will get worse in the coming decades as droughts, floods, and soil degradation increase.

Aaron Shier, senior government relations representative for the National Farmers Union, praised the USDA’sannouncement. “We see these pilot projects as an important step in continuing to advance the work farmers and ranchers are doing to tackle climate change and build a more resilient farm and food system,” he told me.

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https://www.deepplanet.ai/blog/soil-carbon-monitoring

By: Deep Planet

Healthy soil systems act as an important natural carbon sink for the planet by sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide and helping to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations. The value of our planet’s soil as a carbon store cannot be overlooked.

Capable of storing twice the amount of carbon found in the atmosphere and three times that in above ground vegetation, the health of our soil systems is vital for mitigating climate change (Davis et al., 2017).

Soil carbon sequestration is not only important for mitigating climate change, it is also important for improving the general soil quality for vine growth as well (Winetitles, 2021).

Why should we monitor soil carbon:

Improving Crop Performance: Building up healthy levels of soil organic matter can provide growers with higher yielding harvests showing greater resilience in changing climates (Paustian et al., 2019)
Carbon Trading: With the proposed advent of an international carbon market and carbon trading, accurate monitoring of soil carbon will become increasingly important (Johns et al,. 2017).
Mitigating Climate Change: Optimising natural carbon sequestration by improving soil conservation practices and restoring degraded soils can help to reduce concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As little as a 0.1% increase in organic matter can result in an additional 8.9 tonnes of CO2 sequestered per hectare annually by growers.

Hyperspectral & Multispectral Imagery - Only a small proportion of the wavelength spectrum is visible to the human eye. Wavelengths outside the visible spectrum are utilised in hyperspectral and multispectral imagery — **Hyperspectral & Multispectral Imagery** – Only a small proportion of the wavelength spectrum is visible to the human eye. Wavelengths outside the visible spectrum are utilised in hyperspectral and multispectral imagery

Current Monitoring Methods:

Today, the most widely used methods involve regular field testing and laboratory analysis but the process is laborious and expensive when done manually (Johns et al,. 2017). Successfully manually sampling soil carbon between 0-30cm depth with a standard error of less than 2 tonnes/ha is estimated to cost around $1,800 per hectare, representing significant financial outlay when conducted at scale (Singh et al., 2012).

Our Technology:

Deep Planet uses satellite imagery from satellites including radar and hyperspectral satellites to develop an efficient soil carbon monitoring tool for viticulturists.

Soil Carbon levels detected across 3,000ha of North East England using satellite imagery. Darker red areas of the image represent areas with low soil carbon concentrations whilst green/blue represent high levels.

VineSignal can help you baseline and monitor soil organic carbon in your vineyards, across an entire holding with reduced time and labour costs compared to manual monitoring.

Through thousands of experiments based on satellite imagery, we have established the perfect digital signature to detect soil organic carbon for vineyards. This is based on hyperspectral, multispectral, and radar satellite images and manually collected soil samples across 2,000 hectares. Deep Planet’s machine learning models can detect organic soil carbon at an accuracy of 86%.

The Future:

With more data collected through the next year, Deep Planet will continually improve the accuracy of detection and incorporate carbon storage in vegetation. Translating this to action, Deep Planet will help winegrowers identify areas where improvements can be made through common methods such as cover cropping, etc.

We would love to hear from you:

Want to learn how satellite imagery and AI can support you in your carbon farming journey. Register for a demo by using the link below.

Author: Loma Rangier

Farmers, foresters to get $1 billion for climate projects

How Satellite Imagery is Helping to Transform Soil Carbon Monitoring For Growers

Why should we monitor soil carbon:

Current Monitoring Methods:

Our Technology:

The Future:

We would love to hear from you: