Contract Period : 01/07/2022 - 01/06/2023
Main Funder : NEIRF
ORC Staff Contact : Dr Will Simonson
The project will explore the potential for the carbon captured and stored by trees in agroforestry systems to be quantified and potentially used to support the net zero strategies of farmers, land managers and their partners and funders.
The 12-month project will include research to scope and explore the current opportunities for carbon measurement, and then test the viability of assessment and application with a number of pilot sites in England. The ORC team will be developing the carbon calculation framework. Other partners will focus on financial aspects, legal. ORC will be developing the calculations to work out how much carbon there is in an agroforestry system, using a mixture of maths, machine learning and tree measurements in the field to achieve this.
The Soil Association, Woodland Trust, Finance Earth, Organic Research Centre and Scottish Rural College (SRUC) have been awarded funding from the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund to explore the feasibility of developing a carbon code for Agroforestry. The team, supported by Scottish Forestry who manage the Woodland Carbon Code, will scope and explore the potential for the carbon captured and stored by trees in agroforestry systems to be quantified and potentially used to support the net zero strategies of farmers, land managers and their partners and funders.
The project will be looking to provide more information as the work progresses, as the partner organisations report high levels of interest in the scheme. “We also aim to provide opportunities for specific input from interested partners, beyond the pilot testing with the small number of pilot farms. Watch this space,” says Clive, who is acting as project manager for the code development.
