GRACEnet and MAGGnet: “Who, What, Why, Where, and How”.

Successes and lessons learned from two collaborative working groups will be presented, highlighting current participants, past and ongoing activities, overarching goals, and how activities are coordinated nationally and globally.

GRACEnet – Greenhouse gas Reduction through Agricultural Carbon Enhancement network, is a large USDA-ARS multi-location project. Initiated during 2002, GRACEnet was an outcome of the process ARS uses to establish and plan coordinated research. The primary objective of GRACEnet was and is to identify and further develop agricultural practices that will enhance carbon sequestration in soils, promote sustainability and provide a sound scientific basis for carbon credits and trading programs.  The GRACEnet team using established protocols have published >300 peer-reviewed publication including an on-line book of protocols.  The team identified a critical need for a common data entry template for integrating data from multiple locations. In 2013, the first public release of the GRACEnet data portal application went live-making published data freely available to the public.

MAGGnet - Managing Agricultural Greenhouse Gases network, represents a coordinated, multi-national approach for inventory and analysis of greenhouse gas mitigation research specific to croplands.  MAGGnet was established in 2012 within Component 1 of the Global Research Alliance (GRA) Croplands Research Group.  Initial MAGGNET activities have focused on collection and organization of metadata from experimental sites where soil C dynamics and/or greenhouse flux had been part of the data collection protocol.  Seventeen GRA countries, encompassing 204 unique experimental sites have contributed information in response to two metadata calls.  MAGGNET aims to leverage data collected at cropland experimental sites throughout the world in order to strengthen estimates of greenhouse gas mitigation effectiveness from targeted management practices while identifying opportunities for additional field research.