Agricultural impact on soil organic carbon content: testing the IPCC carbon accounting method for evaluations at county scale

The study tests the IPCC's carbon accounting methods for soil organic carbon (SOC) in the Argentinean Pampa Region, finding that a developed Tier 2 (T2) method using the RothC model significantly outperforms the Tier 1 (T1) method. While T1 showed poor performance at both sub-region and county scales, the T2 method demonstrated strong accuracy at the sub-region scale (R2 = 0.85) and improved accuracy at the county scale (R2 = 0.73) when excluding the Flooding Pampa region. The T2 method identified the highest average SOC losses in Central Pampa (35%), Southern Pampa – Eastern (28%), and Rolling Pampa (26%).

• The Tier 1 (T1) IPCC carbon accounting method performed poorly at both sub-region and county spatial scales, whereas the developed Tier 2 (T2) method, based on the RothC model, provided a significant improvement in estimation accuracy.
• The T2 method's performance varied by scale: it was very accurate at the sub-region scale (R2 = 0.85), but showed a poorer fit at the county scale (R2 = 0.46). However, excluding the Flooding Pampa sub-region due to poor input and validation data increased the county-scale R2 to 0.73.
• Using the T2 method to estimate land use change impacts, the highest average soil organic carbon (SOC) losses were found in Central Pampa (35%), Southern Pampa – Eastern (28%), and Rolling Pampa (26%).

APA

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (2025). Agricultural impact on soil organic carbon content: testing the IPCC carbon accounting method for evaluations at county scale. https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/agricultural-impact-on-soil-organic-carbon-content-testing-the-ipcc-carbon-accounting-method-for-evaluations-at-county-scale/

Chicago

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Agricultural impact on soil organic carbon content: testing the IPCC carbon accounting method for evaluations at county scale. 2025. https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/agricultural-impact-on-soil-organic-carbon-content-testing-the-ipcc-carbon-accounting-method-for-evaluations-at-county-scale/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research |title=Agricultural impact on soil organic carbon content: testing the IPCC carbon accounting method for evaluations at county scale |date=17 January 2025 |url=https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/agricultural-impact-on-soil-organic-carbon-content-testing-the-ipcc-carbon-accounting-method-for-evaluations-at-county-scale/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{interamericaninstituteforglobalchangeresearch2025agricultural, author = {{Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}}, title = {{Agricultural impact on soil organic carbon content: testing the IPCC carbon accounting method for evaluations at county scale}}, institution = {Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}, year = {2025}, month = jan, url = {https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/agricultural-impact-on-soil-organic-carbon-content-testing-the-ipcc-carbon-accounting-method-for-evaluations-at-county-scale/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }