Carbon and biodiversity benchmarking in native vegetation on cotton farms

Native vegetation, including remnants, regeneration and revegetation, provide a range of ecosystem services to growers that maintain these areas on farm. The majority of cotton farms in eastern Australia have areas of native vegetation that are not suitable for farming. These include riparian zones that are flood prone, floodways that allow water to move unhindered across floodplains, and areas that have soil constraints or are otherwise unsuitable for cropping. These areas may or may not be grazed, and may be considered ‘unproductive’ from an agricultural perspective. However, a range of existing and emerging incentive schemes and markets for biodiversity and carbon may allow growers to utilise these areas on farm to diversify their income streams. In addition, measures of carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation can be used to assess the sustainability of farming practices. As such, this project will quantify the carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation benefits associated with native vegetation communities commonly found on cotton farms across NSW and Qld. We will resurvey sites established in 2012 across the region, building on baseline carbon and biodiversity data collected as part of a previous CRDC-funded project. Additional experiments will provide data on carbon turnover rates in native vegetation and the potential impacts of climate change on carbon sequestration and decomposition in different situations. A methodology that can be harmonised across industries and fits with international approaches will be developed to assess carbon sequestration in native vegetation on farms. Scientifically-validated data and information regarding the value of native vegetation for a range of benefits will allow growers to participate in environmental stewardship schemes and carbon markets with greater confidence, while demonstrating their sustainability credentials and maintaining their social license to farm.