The Boundary Line between Parkland and Dry Prairie Zones - Alberta Carbon Offset Quantification Protocol for Tillage System Management

The location of the boundary between the Parkland and Dry Prairie tillage protocol area is the boundary between the Black and Dark Brown soil zones in Alberta. The precise location of this boundary has been identified using the Soil Group Map of Alberta (available at http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/soils/soils.nsf/soilgroupmap?readform

This boundary was chosen on the basis of:

Soil Area: The Black–Dark Brown soil zone boundary is an important demarcation of soil organic matter levels and thus potential to sequester or emit carbon, based upon management.
Moisture Regime: The boundary coincides with the –300 Climatic Moisture Index (precipitation minus evapotranspiration).
Historical Precedence: Recommendations, analysis and coefficients for crop management decisions have been made by soil zone boundaries.

The boundary for the purposes of the Tillage System Management protocol is considered to be the fence-line on the Dry Prairie protocol area side of the quarter sections that represent the boundary. The quarter sections of the boundary are considered to be in the Parkland protocol area and the adjacent quarters toward the drier part of the province (usually south or east) are considered in the Dry Prairie protocal area. There are no gaps in the boundary line.

Details on the tillage system management protocol are available online at http://www.carbonoffsetsolutions.ca/.

For more information about the content of this document,or to obtain electronic files of boundary line locations (e.g. Excel, Access, Shape, pdf, kml) contact Sheilah Nolan.

For more information about the content of this document, contact Sheilah Nolan.
This document is maintained by David Spiess.
This information published to the web on October 15, 2007.
Last Reviewed/Revised on September 9, 2011.