The College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) has recently launched a large-scale deep soil carbon coring project across its estate.
The project is the largest of its kind in Northern Ireland, sampling carbon stocks up to 100cm deep in the soil profile.
The carbon coring project has completed in-field sampling across 1,200 hectares of active agricultural land covering a range of farming systems, environments and habitats.
CAFRE’s senior technologist, Elizabeth Earle believes that Northern Ireland’s agricultural soils are an important carbon store, and optimising the condition of the soils will be fundamental for delivering climate targets, environmental sustainability and for ensuring efficient agricultural production.
She said: “The project, delivered by Agricarbon UK, has sampled close to 240 fields ranging from mineral to peat soils, it includes several land uses from lowland and upland beef and sheep grassland systems to lowland dairying, arable and equine systems.
“The project has also taken soil cores from a representative area of woodlands, hedgerows, agroforestry and field margins across the farms to provide information on soil carbon stocks in biodiversity areas across the CAFRE estate.”
According to CAFRE, many scientific studies have shown there are several positive co-benefits between optimising and protecting soil stocks on water quality, soil fertility, nutrient use efficiency and biodiversity.
Carbon
The CAFRE soil carbon coring project has been funded by the Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs (DAERA) carrier bag levy and has been delivered by the sustainable land management branch at CAFRE.
The results from the project will establish an important baseline for deep soil carbon stocks, broad nutrients and carbon properties at a field level for each of the CAFRE farm centres.
Earle hopes the project will build upon the great work of the ArcZero NI project led by Professor John Gilliland which also measured soil carbon stocks across a network of farms in Northern Ireland in 2021.
The project will also support delivery of DAREA farming for carbon policies, Northern Ireland Climate Change Act 2022 target for net zero by 2050 and the CAFRE College Estate Strategy 2021-2030 which sets out the strategic direction of CAFRE innovation work.
