The University of Edinburgh and Plan Vivo Foundation KTP 24_25 R3

Farmers and land managers currently have no reliable way to prove that their trees and hedgerows are locking carbon into the soil, which keeps them locked out of the multi-billion-pound voluntary carbon market. This project will build a practical, user-friendly tool that calculates how much soil carbon agroforestry projects actually store. Without such a tool, carbon credit buyers cannot trust that their money is funding genuine climate action, and small-scale projects cannot afford the expensive, lab-based soil sampling that large forestry operations use. The partnership between the University of Edinburgh and the Plan Vivo Foundation aims to replace guesswork with a standardised, low-cost estimation method. If the tool works, it could unlock new revenue streams for UK farms and environmental regeneration projects. That money would then fund more tree planting, hedgerow restoration, and regenerative agriculture—creating a financial loop that directly rewards carbon storage. The impact would ripple through rural economies, supply chains, and the carbon credit industry itself, which currently lacks a credible, accessible way to verify soil carbon in diverse agroforestry systems. This is applied research with a clear, near-term practical goal: making the carbon market work for the people who manage the land.