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Soil C Tool

Wageningen Environmental Research

Contact: Chantal Hendrix

E-mail: chantal.hendriks@wur.nl

Website: www.slimlandgebruik.nl/themas/monitoren-van-de-voortgang-richting-05-mton/projecten/praktijktool-bodemcoolstof

Link to appstore:

Price: Free

Soil carbon tool that provides insight in the change in your soil organic matter content over time and that helps you making decisions on field and/or farm level regarding improving your future soil carbon management.

Carbon can be added to the soil via: crop residues, green manure, organic manure, and compost. Information on the addition of these potential carbon inputs on the different plots of your farm is therefore essential when using the tool. After entering (or automatically uploading through the databases of DACOM, AgroVision or RVO) the data of your crop and management history, a future scenario on the continuation of your current management can be created. Besides, you can create alternative scenarios that strive for an improved soil carbon management.

Examples of measures that can be taken are: the addition of an extra grain crop in the crop rotation, the addition of extra solid manure or compost, leaving and mulching crop residues, sowing green manure after harvest, or replacing temporary grassland for permanent grassland. So far, only measures that have a significant effect on CO2 sequestration can be calculated. No-till or reduced tillage, species rich grassland or deep-rooting grass species are not included yet because of a non-significant effect or a lack in evidence. Because this tools provides you the opportunity to assess the effect of different soil carbon measures, you can select and concretise most viable carbon measures for your field and farm.

The algorithms behind the tool are based on the scientifically acknowledged carbon model Roth C that is exhaustively calibrated and validated using long-term experiments. More information on the algorithms are available by this document and Lesschen et al. (2021). The model uses five carbon compartments (i.e. pools); four active and one inert. The distribution of the carbon inputs to the different compartments depends on the type of input. The tool also uses different decomposition rates per pool, which depend on temperature, soil moisture, and soil cover.

The tool is financed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Safety, and is developed within the programme Smart Land Use (BO-53-002-034). More information can be found at https://www.slimlandgebruik.nl/.