Should we measure Total Carbon or Organic Carbon only? 

Traditional methods measure Organic Carbon

Traditional soil carbon measurement uses combustion technology, which cannot distinguish between organic and inorganic carbon. The standard approach addresses this by treating soil with acid to dissolve carbonates, then measuring the remaining organic fraction.
⚠️ However, this acid treatment is problematic. The process requires 24+ hours of soaking, making it impractical when analyzing many locations. More fundamentally, the process is unreliable – it takes multiple acid baths to fully remove inorganic C; Moreover, destroying all carbonate while preserving organic C is extremely difficult.

At Carbon Asset Solutions, we measure Total Carbon

In most agricultural soils, inorganic C remains remarkably stable over the timescales we’re measuring (decades to centuries). Climate conditions that significantly alter soil inorganic C operate over millennia. The only mechanism that could substantially change landscape-level inorganic C within decades would be soil erosion removing high-organic topsoil. But this would reduce total C, not increase it, so it’s already captured in our measurements.
💡 What we need for carbon sequestration measurement – and for Scope 1, 2, and 3 reporting – is the change in total soil C. Since inorganic C doesn’t meaningfully change over the measurement period, the change in total C accurately reflects the change in organic C. It’s simply a matter of subtraction between starting and ending measurements.
Put another way: if you’re losing or gaining organic C through management changes, the total C measurement will capture this regardless of the background inorganic C level. A high inorganic C level just means a larger baseline – the delta still reflects sequestration.

Hence, should we measure total carbon or organic carbon only? Total carbon is our go!