MARVIC

The framework must meet several criteria

Reliable monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of soil carbon and greenhouse gas stocks is a prerequisite for many effective climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

The MRV framework developed in this project will provide a standardized approach for designing monitoring, reporting, and verification systems to any public or private carbon farming scheme developer in Europe. These systems should be in line with the EU carbon removal certification regulation, have an optimal trade-off between costs and accuracy of the measured or modelled result, and consider risks of non-permanence by changing land management and natural/human disturbances such as climate change.

Depending on the type of scheme and purpose (such as Common Agricultural Policy or private market), the MRV framework should allow the application of different quantification (TIER) levels (from the IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories). The framework should also allow adaptation of the MRV system to the desired geographical coverage, data availability and infrastructure, and limit the administrative and financial burden to be attractive to land managers.

Developing and testing MRV systems

The main goal of MARVIC, an EU Soil Mission project, is to develop and test a framework for the design of harmonized, context-specific systems for assessing carbon stock changes in soils and woody biomass, and in soil GHG emissions.

The MARVIC project will focus on four land uses: arable land on mineral soils, permanent grasslands on mineral soils, managed peatlands, and woody crops/agroforestry. Developing a robust and cost-effective MRV system with limited administrative burden requires the smart combination of different kinds of data sources, and plant and soil models. These data and models are the building blocks that need to be assembled in operational processing chains. The project will improve and optimize the different building blocks and will investigate the different options to assemble them in operational processing chain for robust quantification of carbon removals. These options will be tested in 12 European countries.

Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) is the co-leader of Work Package 3, where the main aim is to establish and validate methodological procedures to develop, improve and/or implement reliable and transparent models and Operational Processing Chains (OPCs) for Monitoring soil organic carbon stock changes and greenhouse gas fluxes. FMI will, for example, determine the applicability of available models and building blocks, evaluate and improve the performance of models in different contexts, and develop and test prototypes of OPCs using different TIER levels.

MARVIC supports the EU Carbon Removal Certification regulation

The EU Carbon Removal Certification regulation is being established to scale up carbon removal activities and fight greenwashing by setting out QU.A.L.ITY criteria (quantification, additionality, long-term storage, and sustainability) to define high-quality carbon removals and the process to monitor, report and verify the authenticity of these removals. MARVIC especially focuses on methods and standards for reliable quantification of the carbon removals.

Contact us

Liisa Kulmala (Finnish Meteorological Institute), liisa.kulmala@fmi.fi

Layla Höckerstedt (Finnish Meteorological Institute), layla.hockerstedt@fmi.fi