AI to calculate the CO2 balance of rural estates in three minutes

Carbon measurement is an increasingly relevant challenge for the agroforestry sector. Farmers, rural estate owners and forestry managers need reliable, accessible and agile tools to understand the climate impact of their estates, identify opportunities for improvement and, potentially, move towards certification processes linked to voluntary carbon markets. Until now, this type of analysis could require complex processes, technical data that are difficult to obtain and long timeframes.

In response to this challenge, software has been created for mobile phones and computers that simplifies the calculation of the CO₂ balance. Users only have to digitally select the estate through a geolocation system and enter some basic data on soil and crop characteristics, such as the percentage of clay, the presence of manure, the type of crop or other biological and agronomic parameters. Based on this information, the system estimates the difference between the CO₂ emitted by the estate and the amount it is able to absorb.

The solution combines multispectral satellite data —including visible bands, near infrared, short-wave infrared and ultraviolet— with climate databases and historical information from 900 carbon flux towers around the world. These towers measure, on the ground, the exchanges of CO₂, water vapour and energy between the surface and the atmosphere using techniques such as eddy covariance. With this dataset, the system trains machine learning models capable of estimating carbon fluxes in agricultural and forestry estates in different locations.

In addition to the monthly CO₂ balance, the software can generate graphs of annual evolution and short- and long-term projections. It also provides information on soil variables, such as organic matter, surface moisture, texture and mineral composition, by reading the spectral signature of the terrain. This information may be useful both for owners and farmers and for professionals in soil science, environmental management and agroforestry planning.

With this application, which is unique in the world, farmers and rural estate owners have an objective tool that allows them to certify the CO₂ absorption capacity of their land and access the international emissions market. In this way, they can benefit from the carbon credit market, as they can verify, through an independent body, the tonnes of CO₂ that their estate absorbs each year.

Based on this certification, a carbon credit value is issued corresponding to the estate’s absorption capacity over one year. These credits are entered in an international register and become part of the carbon credit market, where companies and other organisations can acquire them at prices that could be between 40 and 100 euros per annual tonne of CO₂.

Owners can therefore obtain a new source of income that complements the production of their agricultural holdings and helps make the estate more profitable. This economic incentive can also become a key tool for strengthening activity in rural areas and helping to curb depopulation, especially among younger generations. In this way, the project helps strengthen the competitiveness of the agroforestry sector and promote new, more sustainable models of rural management.

The contribution of the CATMech group focuses on developing the calculation system and integrating data-based models to transform complex information into useful, understandable and applicable results for end users.

Budget and Funding

The project is part of Agrixels, the data space in the Agrotech field, and UPCxels, the UPC data space, led by IDEAI-UPC. It has received a budget of 150.000 €, funded by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service (Government of Spain), and has a duration of 6 months (January 2025 - June 2026).