Comet-Planner: Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Evaluation for NRCS Conservation Practice Planning.

Conservation planners must assess a range of environmental, agronomic and economic impacts of implementing conservation practices on farms.  While environmental impacts such as soil erosion control, improved soil quality, reduced nonpoint source pollution and a number of other site-specific benefits are currently considered, conservation practices may also have significant climate benefits, through carbon sequestration and/or reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  If conservation planners wish to incorporate greenhouse gas impacts in their planning process, they will need access to quick, easy-to-use tools to assess greenhouse gas impacts of conservation practices on farms.  COMET-Planner (www.comet-planner.com) was developed to provide generalized estimates of GHG impacts of adoption of National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) conservation practice standards in a simple, web-based platform.  Conservation scenarios were modeled in COMET-Farm, a whole farm and ranch carbon and greenhouse gas accounting system based on USDA entity-scale quantification methods, across a range of agricultural management, climate and soil types within Major Land Resource Areas (MLRA).  Mean carbon sequestration and emission changes (CO₂, N₂O and CH₄) associated with NRCS conservation practice adoption were estimated by MLRA. Results are provided to users via the web interface and a detailed methods report.