Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity‐Scale Inventory

Excerpts from the report: Provisions of Section 2709 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 direct the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to prepare technical guidelines and science‐based methods to measure environmental service benefits from conservation and land management activities, initially focused on carbon. The methods contained in this document address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals from agricultural and forestry activities. The objective for this report is to create a standard set of GHG estimation methods for use by USDA, landowners, and other stakeholders to assist them in evaluating the GHG impacts of their management decisions. The methods presented in the report address GHG emissions and carbon sequestration for the entire entity or operation and also provide the opportunity to assess individual practices or management decisions. Therefore, ease of us is critical. A co‐objective is to demonstrate capacity within USDA, establishing a standardized, consensus set of methods that become the scientific basis for entity‐scale estimation of the GHG impacts of landowner management decisions.