This volume provides a comprehensive description of principles and methods for creating greenhouse gas offsets in the agriculture and forestry sectors. Each step in the process is detailed, from scoping the costs and benefits of a project to verifying and registering offsets. Economic concepts such as levelized costs and discount rates are covered, as well as technical information on carbon inventory methods for forest and agricultural systems. The intended readership is wide and includes landowners, project developers, aggregators and verifiers, indeed any individual who might be interested in developing or marketing land-based carbon offsets. The language is clear and very readable, and should be accessible to audiences of varying backgrounds.

Willey and Chameides have done an excellent job of covering the core concepts related to carbon offsets, such as baselines, verification, validation, greenhouse warming potential, upstream/downstream emissions and risk assessment; the discussion of leakage is particularly thorough. Since carbon offsets are still evolving in the USA and there is no formal system or standard, what this volume provides is a recommended approach for interested parties to follow, one that should work with the many existing registry systems and provide the rigour required by the marketplace. While many of the suggested methods and approaches are commonly practised, the idea of proportional baselines is not widely employed and could be burdensome to implement. Some of the forest inventory recommendations, such as seedling and shrub inventories, are not generally practised and would likely add considerable time and expense for little return. However, most practitioners should find the roadmap presented for creating offsets to be workable and easily adapted to fit their particular situation.

Overall, this volume should be quite useful to anyone who needs to understand the emerging market for carbon offsets. A large number of examples and appendices are included; nearly half of the pages comprise appendices that provide additional detail on a variety of topics from quantifying inadvertent emissions to developing new biomass equations. Readers with a natural resources background will find the discussion of the policy and economic aspects of carbon offset projects instructive, and those with a business or policy background will gain a good understanding of the technical aspects of quantifying the various carbon pools. For policymakers, this book is an excellent overview of a complex and growing topic. Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low-Carbon Economy: How to Create, Measure, and Verify Greenhouse Gas Offsets is a thorough well-written treatment of an important topic, and is a useful reference for those in agriculture, business, forestry and policy.