Semi-Arid Rangelands and Carbon Offset Markets: A Look at the Economic Prospects

The interactions between vegetation and erosion: new directions for research at the interface of ecology and geomorphology

“…Although coastal plains and similar moist, low-gradient environments are important areas for carbon storage, other lowto moderate-energy landscapes receive and store sediment from upslope areas and may sequester significant amounts of carbon. Examples are stable montane and piedmont-valley flood-plain surfaces of medium-to large-sized rivers of continental interiors (such as lengthy reaches of the Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Snake Rivers, North America), natural grasslands and flood-plain areas of semi-arid and arid areas (de Steiguer, 2008), and areas of late-Pleistocene glaciation with numerous lakes and low-gradient streams of an immature drainage network ( Figure 6). Relative to native grasslands, but no doubt other low-energy depositional environments as well, climate, hence future climate change, is the most important variable of soil-carbon dynamics, and increased understanding of those dynamics will depend on the integration of carbon-storage studies with effects of imposed management techniques (J.…”

Contributing to the Mitigation of Climate Change Using Rangeland Management

“…Hence, sequestration based mitigation is essentially a question of economics. 5 If a project is to be successfully organized and traded in the carbon offsets market, its cost per ton of sequestering carbon (including all overheads and transaction costs) must be lower than prices offered in the market. These "indirect" costs can represent a substantial proportion of potential rangeland projects.…”

“…5 The study assumed, purely hypothetically, that Arizona state government contemplated selling credits from carbon offset projects on their trust lands. The underlying notion was that reduced stocking rates of cattle grazing on state rangelands would increase soil carbon.…”