Scaling low-cost measurements of soil CO2 emissions

Natural climate solutions, such as climate-smart agriculture and ecosystem restoration, offer opportunities to remove atmospheric carbon at large scales. All these strategies change soil organic carbon reservoirs and greenhouse gas (GHG) exchanges at the soil surface. However, the scientific community lacks a clear understanding of how much carbon the soil can store and for how long. 

The difficulty of measuring GHGs in the field drastically limits the ability to measure, report, and verify natural climate solutions. Existing GHG measurement tools are too expensive and inefficient to capture these processes at scale. For example, portable GHG sensors are costly ($40,000) and labor-intensive. Eddy flux towers require extensive infrastructure and cannot capture spatial variability. 

To address these challenges, this project will develop, refine, and deploy a low-cost, automated, autonomous flux sensor platform (< $100) that can measure CO2 emissions accurately. The technology leverages recent advances in low-cost, commercially available, nondispersive infrared sensor technology developed to monitor industrial and residential air quality. To reduce noise and increase sensitivity, the platform relies on a flux chamber that stabilizes the local environment and the exchanges of CO2 between soil and the atmosphere. The team will deploy and test these chambers and the sensor platform at 15 California agricultural sites that are experimenting with soil-based CO2 removal. Scalable, continuous, low-cost CO2 flux measurements will provide the robust data needed to invest strategically in climate-smart agriculture and to validate soil carbon credits. 

This project continues work performed under the Accelerator’s first funding cycle. The Accelerator is enabling this team to pilot the technology in the field.