Agricultural Conservation (Ag-C) Monitoring Program

Your Guide to Tracking Conservation and Carbon on Working Landscapes

The Agricultural Conservation Monitoring Program (“Ag-C”) features comprehensive guides to support land stewards with working lands monitoring of carbon as primary indicator of ecosystem health. Developed through a collaborative process that brought together leading scientists and members of the farming and ranching community, the below Handbooks for rangelands and croplands offer accessible and scientifically rigorous guidance on monitoring designs, sampling protocols, and laboratory methods. Point Blue Conservation Science also offers interpretation services for data submitted through the secure Ag-C portal to create producer data summaries (pending) and to combine data to scientifically examine conservation impacts more broadly.

Check out our latest report mapping carbon storage potential on California rangelands.

Range-C

The Rangeland Carbon Monitoring Program (“Range-C”) was first released in Summer of 2023, with a version two currently in progress. The Range-C Handbook guides users through the process of monitoring impacts of common conservation practices, leveraging carbon as a primary indicator of changes to ecosystem health. It is the first monitoring framework that we are aware of to offer fit-for-purpose monitoring designs alongside an “inference score” that provides transparency around data quality. We recommend following the Range-C Handbook roughly from start to finish, and welcome users to navigate the sections in whatever way is most useful.

 If you’re interested in learning details on our initial motivation to design this flexible monitoring framework, read our Range-C scoping paper below.

Questions? email rangec@pointblue.org

Crop-C

Building on the success of Range-C, the Cropland Carbon Monitoring Program (“Crop-C”) was released in the Fall of 2024. The Crop-C Handbook guides users through the process of monitoring changes in carbon that result from common conservation farming practices. New features of this guide include a Quick-Form (highlighting key decisions), Pre-Assessment Survey, Project Cost Calculator and new recommendations for tracking soil compaction (bulk density) in tilled systems. We recommend following the Crop-C Handbook roughly from start to finish, and welcome users to navigate the sections in whatever way is most useful.

If you’re interested in learning details on our initial motivation to design this flexible monitoring framework, read our Crop-C scoping paper below.

Questions? email cropc@pointblue.org

Ag-C website last updated: 6/16/2025