Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Accounting (COMET)

The NRCS designated tool for assessing the air quality greenhouse gas emission resource concern is COMET, containing functionality found in the COMET-Farm and COMET-Planner web applications developed by the Colorado State University Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory (NREL).

NREL has developed a COMET API available to other applications wanting access to the COMET computational engine. NRCS CDSI applications, such as the Conservation Desktop currently in development expect to call the COMET API for resource assessment of greenhouse gas emissions as field conservationists develop conservation plans and provide technical assistance to farmers and ranchers. The web services described in this document enable the flow of data between CDSI applications and the COMET-API. COMET-Planner also contains functionality to aid in the selection of conservation practices during the process of creating conservation system alternatives, and two services address this need.