Evaluation of New Soil Carbon Mapping Technology.

Our nation’s croplands are on the verge of major transitions.  In addition to conventional commodity crop production, growers are considering value added products such as carbon credits and additional residue removal for biofuels.  But how will these new management scenarios impact soil conservation?  The ability to monitor soil C and organic matter across landscapes and through time would be a useful tool for soil conservation given potential widespread changes in practice. Recent advances in sensing technology make it possible to measure and map the dynamics of important soil properties that regulate carbon and nutrient budgets in soils.  The new VERIS NIR Spectrophotometer correlates spectral measurements with organic matter, carbon, pH buffer capacity, and other properties, generating maps of the soils characteristics across the landscape.  This potentially useful system may simplify the measurement of important soil properties, provide a new tool for evaluation of conservation management practices, and guide farmers in soil management decisions based on data heretofore unavailable.  While growers might eventually benefit from this capability, the cost is beyond the scope of individual farmers, and service providers (crop consultant, agents, etc.) are unlikely to invest in this technology until it is demonstrated. We have begun to evaluate this technology in both conventional and no-till systems, and we report our initial findings in this paper.