YASSP AND EDF CONDUCT SUCCESSFUL YCNCC-FUNDED WORKSHOP ON SOIL CARBON ACCOUNTING

The Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program (YASSP) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) conducted a successful workshop October 16-17 in The Forestry School’s Marsh Hall on “Developing Scientific Criteria for Empirical Verification of Negative Emissions Achieved Through Soil Carbon Sequestration in Agricultural Lands.” 

Led by YCNCC Scientific Leadership Team members and YASSP Directors Dr. Mark Bradford and Dr. Sara Kuebbing and EDF and Yale School of the Environment Research Scientist Dr. Emily Oldfield – and funded by the YCNCC Workshop Program – the event convened 40 participants from Yale, other universities, non-governmental organizations, government, for-profit corporations, and carbon crediting programs. Participants explored and discussed the challenges and principles related to developing criteria that equate to best practices for designing sampling that leads to robust empirical quantification of management effects on soil organic carbon change at project scales. Motivations for the workshop included the building of new evidence streams that could complement and evaluate the model-centric approaches that currently dominate soil carbon accounting for voluntary carbon markets, scope 3 and national-level accounting.

The workshop was supported by a great team of Yale School of the Environment students, for whom the workshop is part of a semester-long practicum course on synthesizing science for policy and practice. Students spent the first third of the semester learning about the current science of soil carbon storage and measurement and the current policies surrounding soil carbon accounting. Students will now end the course by helping to produce content for a white paper outlining the conclusions from the workshop, which will be shared broadly to inform efforts that seek to build confidence in the quantification of agricultural management effects on soil carbon accrual.