Empirical Assessment of Baseline Conservation Tillage Adoption Rates and Soil Carbon Sequestration in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

The study proposes a methodology for developing a carbon sequestration baseline attributable to the current use of conservation tillage. An integral component of the methodology is the explicit acknowledgment that there is an uncertainty in the baseline because of the uncertainty associated with the use of econometrically estimated models. The results of applying the method to a major crop production area, the Upper Mississippi River Basin in the central United States, are reported for two major crops in the region, corn and soybeans. The approach to estimation of the baseline should be readily transferable to other geographic areas and conservation practices.