Using remote sensing to monitor carbon stocks and flows in agricultural land

Farming practices and interventions that sequester and store carbon in agricultural soils can significantly contribute to climate change mitigation, as well as support farmer's adaptation to increasing frequency of extreme events, droughts and floods. Development of policy, as well as modelling the impact of different policy scenarios (as used e.g. in IPCC AR6) necessitate a good evidence base about the current quantity and pattern of soil carbon in agricultural soils.

The aim of this PhD studentship isto significantly improve on the accuracy of EU-wide mapping of topsoil organic carbon content. For comparison, the current state-of-the-art map produced by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) explains only 21% of the variance in mineral soils and 6% in organic soils (Brogniez et al. Eur. J. Soil Sci. 2014). The JRC map was produced using LUCAS (land use & coverage area frame survey) soil survey data from 2009, whereas the more recent LUCAS soil survey in 2018 used improved protocols (measuring soil bulk density) and has ready-to-go spatial framework for analysis using Copernicus satellites, specifically Sentienl-2.