Tracking metrics for carbon sequestration
Remote technologies can help land stewards and landowners measure progress and identify priorities for sequestration.
Carbon sequestration is a natural process of plants securing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into itself through photosynthesis. This process is also referred to as carbon reduction, greenhouse gas reduction or mitigation, increasing biomass, holding carbon, carbon offset and creating carbon “sinks.”
The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has compiled a list of actions that land trusts, landowners, agricultural and forestry producers can take to reduce atmospheric carbon. Remote technologies can help land stewards and landowners identify priorities for and measure their progress in carbon sequestration.
Compared to in-person monitoring, remote monitoring also reduces the carbon footprint by reducing carbon emissions from vehicles driven by monitors to visit protected lands. This figure can be calculated using any number of online tools including this one that allows for a simple input of gallons of gas not used.
The cumulative effects add up quickly—for example, 22 land trusts in the grant programs reported driving fewer miles using remote monitoring, which, by a conservative estimate, eliminated 12.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released.
In addition to reducing their carbon footprint, land trusts have used remote technology to suggest improvements in grazing management as well as monitoring the progress of forest stand improvements to create structural diversity.
A unique silviculture practice on land trust property
Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy
We have used aerial monitoring for land management and management planning; trail building for our fee title property. We also use it for new baseline inspections and adding to existing baselines. We used it to talk with university researchers on some of their properties, students working on biomass and forest composition on their properties.
