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affecting the emissions of
We .can .reduce .those . greenhouse gases.

transaction .costs .for . “We monitor management prac-
participating .in .ecosystem . tices with satellites, where we can
markets .so .that .there’s . do that for pennies an acre so
value .left .for .the .grower . we don’t have to send somebody
out,” Salas said. “And that’s how
—William Salas, .Dagan we can reduce those transaction
costs for participating in ecosys-
tem markets so that there’s value
Dagan CEO William Salas, who helped left for the grower.”
develop a well-known and long-standing Salas is expanding the model and conducting
model for gauging emissions called DNDC, extensive testing and demonstration of the
for DeNitrification-DeComposition, is working model at ARPA-E sites.
to enhance its use for measuring nitrous oxide
emissions from fields. Both SHI’s and Dagan’s projects have timelines
of about two and a half years.
The research components complement one
another. Morgan’s research and other efforts to Greg Thoma, an engineer and lifecycle assess-
measure carbon are critical to what Dagan is ment expert at the University of Arkansas, also
doing, Salas says. cautions patience. “We can still identify cases
where one model will predict soil carbon loss
“To model nitrous oxide well, we need to know and another one will predict, for the purported
we have reasonable soil carbon data, because same conditions, soil carbon sequestration, so I
soil carbon determines sort of the potential for wouldn’t yet characterize it as settled,” he says.
the size of the microbial community, affects the
soil moisture content, all these other things that Mesko of the Soil Health Partnership said
affect” nitrous oxide, he said. another thing that needs to be measured is the
soil’s water holding capacity and “aggregate sta-
It’s expensive and labor intensive to measure bility,” its ability to hold up under the pressure
nitrous oxide well because it is released from of farm equipment or water.
fields sporadically: A large fraction of all the “If we can have a soil that holds moisture in dry
nitrous oxide emitted in a season can come off in years and moves water through better in wet
a single day. years, then we’re going to have a lot less variabil-
DNDC is designed to model all the practices ity across the field,” Mesko said. “It’s probably
that can lead to nitrous oxide reductions and soil going to increase yield overall, but it’s also going
carbon sequestration, including crop rotations, to allow that farmer to be more efficient in their
conservation tillage, crop residue management, field operations,” rather than avoiding certain
cover cropping, nutrient management and spots because they’re too wet and then coming
the use of compost, Salas said. back to them later.
The model “simulates how these practices Livestock systems another area
influence soil environmental conditions,” such
as temperature, moisture, and mineral nitrogen, where measurement is unsettled
Salas says. “The soil environmental conditions The pork industry is betting that being able to
influence which soil microbes are most active, measure producers’ carbon footprint could give

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