Working group to develop feasible and regionally contextualized guidelines for measuring, mapping, monitoring and reporting on SOC that can be adapted locally to monitor SOC stocks and stock changes to support management decisions
FAO, GSP and ITPS, IPCC, UNCCD-SPI and WMO jointly organised a Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon (GSOC17) in March 2017. The Symposium succeeded in reviewing the role of soils and SOC in the context of climate change, sustainable development and land degradation neutrality. Participants from 111 countries engaged actively by presenting the results of studies demonstrating the potential and challenges of managing and monitoring SOC and by discussing and elaborating key messages. Based on those results, recommendations were developed and were published in the Outcome Document of the Symposium “Unlocking the Potential of Soil Organic Carbon” aiming at supporting the policy processes and actions to encourage the implementation of sustainable soil management practices and strategies that foster the protection and sequestration of SOC. The GSOC’17 Outcome Document developed a number of recommendations for the way forward. One of the recommendations is related to the “establishment of a working group to develop feasible and regionally contextualized guidelines for measuring, mapping, monitoring and reporting on SOC that can be adapted locally to monitor SOC stocks and stock changes to support management decisions”.
The Global Soil Partnership Secretariat has established the working group as a response to the urgent need to identify, compile strategies to develop feasible and regionally contextualized guidelines for measuring, mapping, monitoring and reporting on SOC that can be adapted locally to monitor SOC stocks and stock changes to support management decisions. Such guidelines need to build on existing scientific guidance, such as that being refined by the IPCC, and they should be sufficiently simple to enable implementation in diverse contexts and scales and given differing local and national capacities and capabilities to countries. Practical guidance should also include elements to support carbon-pricing mechanisms by relying on the measurement of SOC stocks to assess stock changes, rather than using only stock change factors based on land use and management practices.
An Open Call was launched by GSP Secretariat in March 2018. 135 experts from all GSP Regions responded to the Call. Currently, the group is identifying the Lead and contributors authors by an open process internal process.
Draft outline structure of the guidelines
1. Introduction and definitions
2. Baseline Soil Organic Carbon Stocks
- Introduction
- Sampling Design
- Field Sampling, Sample Processing
- Laboratory Methods
- Bulk Density, Coarse Fragments
- Data Handling
- Stock Calculations
3. Measuring SOC
4. Mapping SOC and SOC Changes
- Conventional Methods
- Process Based Models
- Digital Soil Mapping
5. Monitoring Soil Organic Carbon
- Introduction
- SOC Monitoring Methods, Approaches
- Detection Limits
- Sampling Frequency
- Monitoring on Different Land Systems
- Agricultural Lands, Pastures
- Forest Lands
- Wetlands
- Grasslands
- Wetlands
6. Uncertainty Assessment
- Introduction
- Sources of Uncertainty
- Uncertainty Quantification
7. Reporting SOC, integration with GLOSIS and SoilSTAT
ANNEXES – Technical manuals
I – Technical Guide - Soil Sampling Design, Field Guide, Analytical Methods
II – Technical Guide - Modelling SOC and SOC Stock Changes
Timeline
05 March - 10 April 2018 | Open call |
June 2018 | Structure of the guidelines, final list of leading authors and co-authors |
August 2018 | First draft of the chapters |
September 2018 | First draft of the guidelines |
September 2018 | Review by ITPS/UNCCD-SPI/IPCC |
November 2018 | Finalisation of the guidelines |
5th December 2018 | Launch of the guidelines |