The Beauty of Heatmaps

Did you know there’s a way to understand how many carbon credits you could accrue from an environmental planting project on your property without having to take a single measurement? 

Thanks to the Clean Energy Regulator’s predictive FullCAM model, we’re able to model your property’s carbon yield potential and provide you with a heatmap showing the areas where planting trees will provide the best carbon yield. 

We use the same modelling parameters as the Clean Energy Regulator’s FullCAM application, so your heatmap will match the carbon yields calculated  under a Reforestation by environmental or mallee plantings FullCAM method project to +/- 5%. Our heatmap feature gives you the clearest helicopter view of what tree planting areas across your land would sequester the most carbon in line with the ACCU Scheme’s carbon yield modelling. 

This is called a heatmap.

But wait… If it doesn’t require measurements on the ground, how does FullCAM work?

The Clean Energy Regulator recognises that it’s a bit of a headache (and expensive) to measure carbon sequestration across all of Australia’s 769 million hectares using field sampling alone. Instead, the FullCAM model draws on more than 50 years worth of climate, soil carbon, plant productivity, land cover change and land management data to estimate carbon stock change in ecosystems.

With this databank as its base, the model uses a formula to calculate how many tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e or carbon units) will be removed from the atmosphere by a environmental planting project over the course of a 25-year project period.

As long as your project is compliant with the method, you’ll be awarded credits for the carbon units that your heatmap indicates your environmental planting project will sequester over the project lifetime. 

No fancy bells and whistles. What you see is what you get.

FullCAM is used in six different carbon project methodologies, as well as Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Accounts under the Kyoto Protocol, so it’s highly robust and credible. By using a predictive carbon yield model like FullCAM, the environmental planting method avoids the cost of ongoing sampling and testing required by some other methodologies – which is a big bonus. 

So why is a heatmap useful?

In a nutshell, a heatmap takes a lot of the guesswork out of an environmental planting carbon project, as it shows you the carbon yield variation across your property at an interval density of 200m. Given the complexity of the data sets involved, carbon yield can vary quite substantially across a holding, so the yield represented in the colour scale can help you target the carbon sweet spots across your property when planning your planting design. This means you can optimise your carbon yields (and profits) when integrating trees across your farm. 

You can now order your heatmap for $250 + 5c per hectare! Contact our friendly team today to order yours!

You beauty! I’ve ordered a heatmap. What’s next?

Happy with your carbon yields and want to dig further? We suggest you schedule in a pre-feasibility presentation, so we can give you and your stakeholders a more detailed financial breakdown of your carbon project. Following this, you can order a full feasibility report which will help you understand all the nuts and bolts involved in a carbon project, tailored to your land and your operation.

Check out the full feasibility process for our three methods here.

Keen to hear more?

Explore our range of educational resources in our Carbon Farming Education Hub where we frequently publish educational articles, webinars, and guidebooks. 

When you’re ready to explore the feasibility of undertaking a carbon project on your property, email us at [email protected] or give us a bell at (08) 6835 1140 to be connected with one of our project facilitators.