b"FLUXES The European Greenhouse Gas Bulletin5 questions to the scientists 3. When do you expect results? The final results will be released in 2026. Intermediate outcomes will be published in scientific journals and open repositories over the following years. Q&AMonitoring soil organic carbon to4. How can the results be used on the national, support carbon farming regional and local scales?The MRV4SOC project aims to monitor the changes inOur local and landscape approach is being developed organic carbon in soil, caused by climate change andwithin the framework of national greenhouse gas land management practices. The goal is to standardiseinventories. The results will help us define guidelines MRV systems in the EUs land sector and, ultimately,and recommendations to establish an MRV system for establish a methodological MRV framework to increasethe EU land use sector. trust in voluntary carbon markets. The project uses data from 14 demo sites across5. What have been the project's most significant Europe, five of which are greenhouse gas measurementchallenges and successes thus far?stations in the ICOS network. These are the forestOur first challenge was the lack of a standardised, station Hurdal in Norway and four sites in Belgium: arobust, and transparent Tier 3 (see glossary page 57) forest station in Brasschaat, a grassland station inmethodological approach for measuring carbon stocks Dorinne, and two cropland sites, one in Lonze and theacross various land use classes and management prac-other in Westmalle. The ICOS stations, in particular,tices. The second challenge was the absence of a stand-contribute significantly to increasing the understandingardised MRV framework for the EU land sector. In of carbon farming practices.addition, the lack of suitable long-term data sources FLUXES spoke to Dr Marta Gmez-Gimnez, Coor- (e.g. soil properties, vegetation, management practices) dinator of the MRV4SOC project and Project Managerhas slowed down the development of such a highly & Remote Sensing Specialist at GMV, a private capitalcomplex methodological approach. Tier 3 methods, technology business group. especially to be used within voluntary rewarding mech-anisms, require that this data should be available not 1. What challenge is MRV4SOC set to solve? only on national level or province level but disaggre-The main objective of the project is to monitor thegated for smaller areas, such as farm holdings. This changes in long-term soil organic carbon (SOC) accu- degree of detail is not publicly available or not even mulation in nine ecosystem types, each representing acollected in many countries in the world.distinct land use type within the EU. We are particu- On the other hand, the collaborative efforts of the larly interested in changes in soil organic carbon causedEuropean Research Executive Agency, the Directo-by carbon farming practices under different localrate-General for Climate Action, and the Joint Research climate conditions and climate change scenarios.Centre have successfully brought together the private and public sectors, providing momentum for the project 2. What is MRV4SOC doing to solve this? to develop robust, standardised, cost-effective and The project aims to develop a robust, standardised, trans- transparent Tier 3 MRV systems. The EU's ambition to parent and cost-effective MRV system to be implementedachieve climate neutrality by 2050 has motivated us to on different scales through ground-based and satelliteseek reliable, interoperable and cost-effective solutions data and process-based models. This MRV system iswithin complex ecological and socioeconomicPhoto: Claudia Droscellifocused on monitoring changes in soil organic carbon incontexts. different ecosystems, such as peatlands and wetlands, forests, croplands and grasslands, just to name a few. TheThe EU-funded project got its name - MRV4SOC - from goal is also to increase trust in the voluntary carbonmonitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and soil organic markets. carbon (SOC)."