Overview
The Soil Inventory Project (TSIP) is a science-led non-profit dedicated to collecting, storing, and modelling agroecological data to support regenerative agriculture and address critical environmental challenges. TSIP has developed innovative soil sampling technologies, a field data collection mobile application, and is making available a state-of-the-art Multi-Model Ensemble for accurate predictions of soil carbon changes, crop yields, and ecosystem services.
Voluntary carbon markets could play an important role in investor and corporate action on net zero. Nonetheless, the lack of credibility—especially in nature-based carbon credits—is a major barrier, which hinders the flow of capital into responsible management of natural carbon sinks. Further, while many organizations have focused on forests as a carbon stock, there has not been sufficient focus on carbon sequestration by soil.
Soil carbon represents the largest terrestrial carbon pool (more than double that of forests) and is critical to the global carbon budget. It is mainly affected by agriculture. Widespread adoption of agricultural practices that preserve nature could have a substantial impact on reducing our impact on the environment. To date, however, soil carbon monitoring and verification have been hampered by fragmented data collection and inconsistent proprietary models and methods, which undermine confidence in carbon credits.
Our funding will help TSIP develop a soil data repository, multi-model ensemble, and digital tools in order to support standard-setting for nature-based carbon credits. In turn, we hope this will encourage the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices, and incentivize capital flows by enabling verifiable carbon sequestration claims.
Read more about TSIP's work on their website: thesoilinventoryproject.org.