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Introduction
The Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases-CarbOn
Management
Evaluation Tool (COMET-VR ) tool is a decision support tool for agricultural producers, land managers, soil scientists and other agricultural interests.
COMET-VR provides an interface to a database containing land use data from the Carbon Sequestration Rural Appraisal (CSRA) and calculates in real time the annual carbon flux using a dynamic Century model simulation.
Users of COMET-VR specify a history of agricultural management practices on one or more parcels of land. The results are presented as ten year averages of soil carbon sequestration or emissions with associated statistical uncertainty values. Estimates can be used to construct a soil carbon inventory for the 1605(b) program.
Getting Started
Click here to find information on how to start the COMET-VR Tool or use the navigation link "Help" at the top of the page. You will need the following information about each parcel :
- The location;
- The area in English or Metric units;
- The land management type (i.e., Agricultural or Forest);
- The soil surface texture and hydric condition;
- The management history for four time periods.
Click Here! to start the Voluntary Report COMET-VR or use the navigation link "COMET-VR Tool" at the top of the page.
A New Version with Enhancements: COMET2
An expanded version of COMET-VR is available for US farms, ranches, and orchards. The new tool provides an enhanced suite of farming practices, significant revisions to grazing and haying practices, and new models to estimate soil carbon and biomass from orchards and other woody practices.
Use COMET2 to estimate your whole entity greenhouse gas footprint for CO2 - Equivalent emissions for soil and N2O Emissions and CO2 from fuel usage for field operations.
CLICK HERE to use the new COMET2.
COMET-VR 1.0 management systems are
based on 1997 NRCS NRI data and represent the dominant crop rotations in each region.
Database Development and Modeling
 The carbon management tool is a collaborative research effort between
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Colorado State University, Natural Resource Ecology Lab (CSU NREL). Currently, the COMET-VR site is hosted by Colorado State University, NREL.
This tool estimates soil carbon changes for management alternatives for a ten year projection period within each Major Land Resource Area (MLRA) allowing users to estimate soil carbon sequestration on a parcel of land. The analysis is based on MLRA’s as defined by NRCS in Ag Handbook 296 (see table 1). Data were reviewed and quality control measures assured that the highest quality inputs were used in the Century model analyses.
Model Inputs
- Climate data are assembled at the Major Land Resource Area (MLRA) level and are based on Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM).
- Management inputs for cropping systems, tillage systems, fertilizer use, and fuel estimates are also included.
- Land use and activity data were assembled at the MLRA level based on historical records, the USDA NRCS National Resources Inventory (NRI) and data collected using a modified Carbon Sequestration Rural Appraisal (CSRA).
 Century is a generalized biogeochemical ecosystem model which simulates carbon (i.e., biomass), nitrogen and other nutrient dynamics. The model simulates cropland, grassland, forest and savanna ecosystems and land use changes between these different systems. The Century Model was developed by Colorado State University (CSU) and USDA Agriculture Research Service (ARS).
The Century model is widely used in the U.S. and in several other countries around the world for estimating national soil carbon inventories. In previous work, NRCS and NREL have collaborated in using the model to estimate impacts of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on soil carbon sequestration and to conduct county level soil carbon estimates for cropland in Iowa, Indiana, and Nebraska.
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