MARVIC

The European Commission has set the ambition to become climate neutral by 2050 in order to meet the ambitions of the Paris Agreement (2015). As not all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be avoided, such as GHGs from biological processes in agriculture, carbon removal will become increasingly important to meet these ambitious neutrality targets. Carbon farming schemes are payment systems that reward land managers for sequestering carbon and reducing GHG emissions by adopting a set of agricultural practices that can increase soil organic carbon storage in soils, a process known as 'carbon farming'. MARVIC is a Horizon Europe Soil Mission project, launched in June 2023 to support the EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) regulation, a crucial step in scaling up carbon removal activities and boost faith in European carbon farming schemes. 

The main goal of MARVIC is to develop and test a framework for the design of harmonized, context-specific Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems for assessing soil carbon stock changes and GHG emissions in agriculture. MARVIC’s approach is to smartly combine different building blocks of data, models and remote sensing to establish monitoring systems that are accurate yet cost effective in predicting soil organic carbon stock changes over time. MARVIC collaborates with over 15 institutions, including Aarhus University. At AU, key contributors include Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, Sofia Biffi, Iris Vogeler, and Lars Munkholm. At LandCRAFT, we investigate the issue on non-permanence of carbon removals in the light of climate change. We are also developing guidelines for uncertainty analysis and error propagation during the stage of calibration and validation of the models used to estimate SOC stock change, and develop strategies to make optimal use of existing benchmark sites data (long term-experiments, farm networks, national monitoring programs) in MRV systems and establish new ones. 

More information can be found on the MARVIC website: https://www.project-marvic.eu/