Team
- Jonathan Sanderman Carbon Program Director, Senior Scientist
- Jennifer D. Watts Arctic Program Director, Associate Scientist
- Yushu Xia Research Scientist
- Charlotte Rivard former Research Assistant
- Stephanie Ewing Associate Professor, Montana State University
- Megan Machmuller Research Scientist, Colorado State University
- Francesca Cotrufo Professor of Soil and Crop Sciences, Colorado State University
- Morgan McLeod Ecosystem Ecology and Invasion Researcher, MPG Ranch
- Haydee Hernandez Yañez Conservation Data Manager, The Nature Conservancy
Over a quarter of the planet’s ice-free land is used for the grazing of livestock, and these rangelands hold 30% of global soil carbon.
Conversion of prairie to cropland and overgrazing has caused substantial soil carbon loss. However, through improved land management, rangelands offer an enormous opportunity to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and limit climate change.
Our Work
Carbon Monitoring in Rangelands is a research program aimed at understanding and unlocking the promise of rangeland management as a natural climate solution. We provide tools and data that can help ranchers, policymakers, and tribal agencies track the land’s forage production and carbon balance. This information has broad applications—it provides land managers with the ability to monitor indicators of ecological status, assess the impacts of land management choices, and effectively engage with carbon markets.
In collaboration with Columbia University and others, we developed the novel Rangeland Carbon Tracking and Management Tool (RCTM), a low-cost remote sensing and field data informed system for monitoring plant productivity and the ecosystem carbon balance of grassland systems at local to regional scales. The RCTM framework utilizes open source data, is peer reviewed (Xia et al., 2024, in review), and the underlying source code is freely available.
Above: Map of soil carbon change over the past 20 years across a ranch in Southwest Colorado. Image by Andrew Mullen.
We are implementing the RCTM across two million acres of grasslands in the Northern Great Plains as part of an ambitious pilot carbon monitoring study, in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Audubon Conservation Ranching initiative, and World Wildlife Fund’s Ranch Systems and Viability Planning program. We are also applying the RCTM at ranches in western Colorado (with Western States Ranches) and other regions, to further test and refine the approach.
Our goals are to:
- Demonstrate that changes in carbon storage due to changes in grassland management can be affordably and accurately measured
- Quantify rangeland carbon sequestration and longer-term trajectories of changes in net ecosystem CO2 exchange and soil carbon stocks across the region
- Begin to understand the climate benefits of improved grazing management systems and other grassland conservation projects
We aim to make the RCTM operational for all grazing lands within the U.S. and North America, and the data available at no cost to ranchers and land managers from State, Federal, and Tribal agencies.
Our Impact
By developing the RCTM and a free web application, our aim is to provide grazing lands managers with a high-resolution, 20+ year record of changes in carbon fluxes and soil carbon storage. With this accurate and timely data on rangeland forage and carbon change, more producers can adopt conservation and management practices that lead to more efficient, productive land with climate benefits.
Support provided by:
Conscience Bay Research
Mighty Arrow Family Foundation
J.M. Kapland Fund
Woodwell Fund for Climate Solutions
Partners & Collaborators
