"This project has given us a holistic view of our landscape assets and how our management decisions affect those assets. The diverse connections within the project team and the expertise and insights they’ve offered have been applied across our sustainability program."
Naomi Wilson, AACo
Livestock producers and land managers are increasingly focused on managing landscape carbon, not just to boost profitability and productivity, but also to improve sustainability, build resilience, meet carbon targets and respond to market expectations.
Measuring soil and vegetation carbon across vast rangelands is both expensive and time consuming, and even when the data is available, reliably estimating the carbon sequestration potential and the best management strategies across complex rangelands landscapes can be challenging.
AACo is Australia’s largest landholder and biggest red meat producer. It owns one per cent - or 6.4m hectares - of Australia’s landmass across varied landscapes in Queensland and the Northern Territory, making it the ideal data source for the validation of new carbon measurement and modelling approaches that can be scaled for national benefit.
This project delivered an accurate and affordable method for estimating carbon in Australian rangelands and assessing how different land management techniques influenced soil carbon. This supports holistic land management and participation in the carbon market.
Using advanced analytics, including machine learning and process modelling, the research identified a statistically significant relationship: better land condition tends to have higher Soil Organic Carbon (SOC), creating a strong incentive for sustainable land management practices.
The project delivered practical outputs that strengthen decision-making and monitoring capabilities. A high-resolution SOC baseline map was developed alongside an advanced digital Integrated Model, providing a robust foundation for modelling and scenario analysis. These tools enable more accurate assessments of carbon dynamics across diverse rangeland environments.
Research examining the sampling density required for SOC quantification in these environments showed that accurate results could be achieved at much lower sampling rates than was previously thought, reducing field sampling costs.
In addition, a natural capital risk platform was created to systematically evaluate nature-related impacts and dependencies associated with SOC. This platform visualises spatial risk patterns and demonstrates their implications through a fire case study, offering a clear view of how environmental risks intersect with carbon strategies.
February 2026 - Final Report: Understanding and Unlocking Rangelands Carbon
January 2025 - Blog: PhD Success Story: Allister Clarke
May 2024 - Blog: Digging Deeper into Soil Carbon
December 2023 - Report: Nature-based risk assessment for the northern beef sector
November 2022 - Blog: Sustainability, carbon and natural capital: Where to begin?
September 2022 - Digital Agrifood Summit: Improving carbon farming through data, integration, and partnership
February 2022 - Blog: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of a Booming Carbon Market
November 2021 - The Australian: AACo’s grand plan to be climate positive
November 2021 - Media Release: AACo & Food Agility CRC to revolutionise how farmers measure, manage and trade carbon
