Towards a SECO for Carbon Credit Control

Luiz Fernando Santos Jonas Gomes Regina Braga

Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science
Federal University of Juiz de Fora Federal University of Juiz de Fora Federal University of Juiz de Fora
Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
fernando.santos@estudante.ufjf.br jonas.gomes@estudante.ufjf.br ORCID: 0000-0002-4888-0778

José Maria N. David Victor Stroele

Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science
Federal University of Juiz de Fora Federal University of Juiz de Fora
Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
ORCID: 0000-0002-3378-015X ORCID: 0000-0001-6296-8605

Abstract— Global warming has been a topic of great concern
in recent years. It is believed that it is related to greenhouse
gases. In Brazil, the land use change was responsible for the
largest share of emissions in 2021. The balanced use of soil may
enable the country to generate carbon credits with a potential
economic return and can mitigate emissions. There is a diversity
of data available that, integrated, can contribute to support the
process of generating carbon credits. However, developing
applications related to carbon emission in agribusiness requires
support focused on agricultural Measurement, Reporting, and
Verification (MRV) systems. In this sense, this study presents a
proposal for a Carbon Credit Control SECO. The purpose is to
provide a platform to support the development of applications
related to carbon emission/credits control related to land use
and animal husbandry in Brazilian rural properties. As a result,
we seek to generate knowledge to offer alternatives for land
cultivation with a focus on mitigating the emission of greenhouse
gases and the stock of carbon in the soil, providing support for
the generation and certification of credits.
Keywords—carbon credit, SECO, provenance, blockchain
I. INTRODUCTION
Global warming has become a topic of great concern in
society and a research focus in the scientific community [30].
Its impacts are increasing every year [28]. The cause is related
to an increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [28, 30].
According to the International Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), linked to the United Nations, each of the last four
decades has been successively warmer than any previous one.
It is estimated that temperatures will continue to rise
throughout the 21st century if actions to contain the problem
are not adopted on a large scale [22].
Brazil, which occupies the fifth place among the biggest
climate polluters, with about 3.2% of the world total, behind
only China, USA, Russia, and India [38], established the
commitment to neutralize 100% of greenhouse gas emissions
through the Brazilian National Long-Term Strategy [41]. The
Climate Observatory [38] points out that the change in land
use, such as the felling of trees for livestock activity, was
responsible for the largest share of emissions in 2021: 46% of
the gross total. In addition to actions to curb deforestation, it
is necessary to advance in care for land use and livestock, in
the search for and implementation of solutions that balance
agribusiness with sustainable development.
Among the alternatives to accelerate the climate transition,
the carbon-credit market has gained increasing attention in
recent years [48]. International expectations are that this
market should grow in the coming years. In Brazil,
expectations are equally positive [43], as it is a country with
great potential for carbon credit generation based on nature-
based solutions, which include forest conservation activities,
reforestation, and sustainable management of soils and
pastures [7, 48].
Due to the importance of agricultural activity in the
Brazilian economy, which in 2021 represented 28.8% of the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) [32], this sector is a
fundamental part of the strategy to mitigate the emission of
greenhouse gases. Despite the great potential for generating
carbon credits, economic barriers exists due to the high
investment required [37]. The agricultural sector is complex,
with a significant diversity of production systems directly
related to environmental, social, and economic aspects, with
no single solution to face the challenges posed [33].
Furthermore, pricing in the carbon market currently does not
follow a common pattern. The price of credit tends to vary
according to sectors, regions, complementary certifications, or
benefits linked to the activity, such as social benefits, for
example [43]. Given this context, the process for generation
and certification tends to be complex, especially for small and
medium-sized rural producers. However, it can be facilitated
with the collaboration of specialists from public and private
institutions involved with this domain and with the generation
of knowledge from existing data in these institutions and
available on the properties.
Therefore, a diversity of data is available, mainly in public
databases and captured on the rural properties. Once
integrated, these data can generate knowledge, providing
support for decisions that collaborate in the reduction of the
carbon “footprint”, which in this context can be understood as
the measurement of the total GHG emissions caused directly
or indirectly in the rural properties [39].
In this sense, this article presents a proposal for the
specification of a SECO platform to support the development
of applications related to the control of carbon
emission/credits. The initial focus is on crops, land
management, emission estimates, and stock of greenhouse
gases related to land use and animal husbandry, providing
information, calculations, and simulations of the carbon
“footprint”. From a set of services offered by the platform, we
have the support for: i) intelligent data analysis, ii) the use of
provenance [16], aiming at obtaining data and process
traceability, and iii) the necessary reliability for certification
of credits in blockchain networks [15, 52].
This proposal advances previous works related to a
Scientific Software ECOsystem named E-SECO [1] and an e-
LiveStock Architecture [5]. We aimed to create a shared

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

platform that allows the reuse of services through data
integration support for Carbon Control.
In this way, the possibility of integrating deforestation
monitoring data sent by satellite, data from studies of soil
samples, and data captured by sensors in animals and soil
sensors are foreseen. As a specific contribution, this article
details the main components of the platform and how they can
support the development of applications related to the control
of carbon credits. This article is organized into the following
sections, in addition to the Introduction. Section 2 addresses
concepts related to carbon credits and MRV systems. Section
3 presents the related works. Section 4 describes the proposal.
Section 5 describes the preliminary results. Section 6 presents
the limitations and Section 7 addresses considerations about
the continuation of the study and the conclusion.
II. BACKGROUND
Countries needing to obtain recognition of their results
with the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation, Forest
Degradation, and Increase in Carbon Stocks, known by the
acronym REDD+, must go through the Measurement,
Reporting and Verification (MRV) process, defined under the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) [20].
An MRV system consists of processes and procedures
through which information is provided, evaluated, and
verified to determine “if, how and how much” the parties in-
volved effectively fulfilled their obligations [51].
Measurement is needed to identify emission trends and
determine where to focus efforts. At the same time, reporting
and verification are important to ensure transparency, good
governance, accountability, and credibility of results [45].
Among the public MRV systems, initiatives by blocks such as
the European Union, countries such as Australia and New
Zealand, and the state of California, in the USA, stand out.
These are broad solutions, which include various economic
sectors, such as transport, industry, and agriculture. MRV
systems have very generic characteristics and end up adapting
to more specific local policies, focusing on sectors with the
greatest potential for mitigating emissions [37].
Although there are many initiatives, MRV systems that are
broad and applicable to the wide variety of Brazilians ‘biomes
and production systems are not found in other countries [40].
Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation),
through a task force, coordinates the development of an MRV
system within the scope of the ABC Plan (Low Carbon
Agriculture), as a first conceptual proposal, largely based on
existing applications at Embrapa itself. However, there is the
challenge of integrating applications and data, to allow a broad
and economically viable MRV for Brazilian agriculture [37].
Therefore, considering the requirements of MRV systems,
"if, how and how much" and the need to ensure transparency,
good governance, accountability, and credibility of results, we
believe that technologies such as intelligent analysis (such as
machine Learning (ML) and ontologies), provenance and
blockchain can provide adequate support in this context.
1
captures a workflow's structure and static context, i.e., it expresses the steps
to be followed to generate a dataset. It is a specification of the computational
tasks that will be performed in the experiment.
2
it is associated with information about the execution of a workflow, i.e.,
information about the activities performed - steps taken to derive a dataset.
Machine Learning (ML) and Ontological techniques can
contribute to finding important relationships but not naturally
detected. In this vein, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) [4]
favor learning from experience. Learning takes place by
analyzing pre-established patterns or the analysis of results.
Ontological models [8] are semantic models, that can infer
specific situations by analyzing data through processing rules.
Provenance is defined as the origin or lineage of data that
helps understand the scientific experiment results [13].
Provenance data are considered intellectual property [14, 5].
Only authorized people can share or view results. On the other
hand, users must have confidence in this analysis. Thus, all
data updates must be tracked and verified aimed to know how
the data was created over time. Moreover, data availability is
essential.
Lim et al. [29] and Koop and Freire [27] classify
provenance into three types, prospective1, retrospective2, and
evolutionary3 provenance. In heterogeneous data scenarios, as
the carbon certification, the provenance capture must be
independent of the data source, allowing interoperability
between them. Several community efforts culminated in the
development of generic models to represent provenance and
promote interoperability, including the OPM (Open
Provenance Model) [35] and the PROV [19, 34]. PROVOne
[9] is a provenance model, extended from PROV, that enables
interoperability by integrating heterogeneous information
from multiple sources connected in a workflow.
Using a standard provenance model is part of the process,
considering it does not guarantee confidence in the data or its
availability. There is also a need for an environment that
allows carbon certificate players to share data and conduct the
certification process that guarantees confidence in and
availability of the data (as the data is not in only one place and
can be in several formats). Blockchain-based systems [36] can
be an alternative to bring trust to activities. Blockchain also
has the potential to improve interoperability and transparency.
Blockchain is as an immutable, decentralized, and shared
book that maintains a sequence of chronological blocks,
encrypted, and connected, over a peer-to-peer (P2P) network
[15, 52]. The blocks form a chain, a linear sequence that
enables the auditing and traceability of information. The
blockchain records data inputs in a decentralized way and
allows entities to interact with each other without a trusted
third party. This communication is done through transactions
and reflects the semantics of the application, and can be any
information, i.e., currency, carbon certification data, or others.
Blockchain networks can be classified as permissionless,
where anyone can join, make transactions, or leave the
network; or permissioned, i.e., a network controlled by a
group of known nodes with a central authority that decides and
assigns the right to peers to write/read operations. One of the
technologies for blockchain implementation is the
Hyperledger Fabric4 [2]. In this technology, network access is
restricted to authorized people, characterizing it as
permissioned [49, 50]. These requirements point to the
potential applicability of blockchain as a facilitator for the
More specifically, it is a detailed log of the execution of each task in the
workflow.
3
reflects changes made between two executed versions of the workflow, i.e.,
the evolution history, keeping all changes applied throughout its lifecycle.
4
https://www.hyperledger.org/use/fabric
certification process when executed on specific platforms [11,
12, 25, 47], bringing trust to provenance data.
Using provenance and blockchain can aid in data
traceability, availability, and trust in the carbon certification
process. Few works provide solutions in this regard,
emphasizing intelligent data analysis, provenance, and sharing
in a broader sense. However, they need to provide a set of
services to support the development of applications in this
domain.
III. RELATED WORK
Arulnathan et al. [3] present a systematic review of
decision support tools focusing on farm sustainability. The
study reviewed 19 applications characterizing and identifying
trends in methodological choices made by developers. They
all included estimates of GHG emissions. According to the
authors, this is the category with the greatest impact due to the
attention of the private sector and global environmental
policy.
Among the tools evaluated by [3], Ofoot stands out. In
Carlson et al. [10], the Ofoot tool is presented as a system for
calculating estimates of greenhouse gas emissions in organic
farms in the Pacific Northwest, North America. It consists of
an online application in which the user registers the farm and
lists an inventory containing equipment, infrastructure, and
consumables used on the property, such as tractors, buildings,
fuel, and fertilizers. Soil management techniques can also be
included. For each item, the software assigns an estimate, and
at the end of the processing, a total emissions report is
generated. However, the use of the tool is limited to the Pacific
Northwest region and organic food cultivation due to the
parameterization of the estimation models.
Thumba et al. [46] conducted studies review on decision
support systems for mitigating GHG emissions in livestock.
As a result, they identified opportunities for improvement and
presented an architecture suggestion that consists of data,
analysis, and reporting modules. The suggested architecture
also foresees the analysis of scenarios contemplating financial
variables and climatic conditions to examine the impact of
emissions on each one them.
Kim and Baumann [26] present an initial proposal for
using ontologies to create smart contracts in MRV systems
using blockchain networks. The ontology aims to support
smart contracts on different blockchain platforms, provide the
standardization and sharing of concepts, and contribute to the
interoperability and traceability of data between MRV
systems.
Ju et al. [24] present a proposal to optimize the traceability
of carbon credit data in blockchain networks. The study uses
the concept of distributed traceability, with the steps "off-
chain traceability and on-chain verification". The technique is
divided into three stages: location, recovery, and verification.
Considering that the credit generation process can accumulate
much data, including files, the idea is that the location and
retrieval of this data are parallelized to reduce the
computational cost in document filtering operations. The
proposal aims to reduce the search effort on the blockchain
network, delegating the recovery for IPFS. In experiments
carried out, the technique proved to be efficient, especially
when the chain of transactions is long; however, with higher
Internet bandwidth consumption, due to the constant
interactions between the network nodes and the IPFS system,
which can be a limiting factor in some cases.
Various studies are aimed at calculating carbon emissions
and MRV systems in several areas, including agriculture and
livestock. However, according to [3], no solution covers all
dimensions of sustainability, be used globally, and
satisfactorily supports rural producers. Applications must
prioritize methodological issues to meet their specific
purposes. Other more recent works [24, 26] have used
ontologies and blockchain networks to generate carbon
credits, emphasizing the importance of traceability and data
reliability.
In this sense, the platform proposed in this article
encompasses concepts addressed in other works, differing,
however, by the provision of services to support the
development of Carbon emission/credit applications to attend
different players and with the focus in the Brazilian biomes,
using data from national institutions, to generate knowledge
for rural properties, which can be integrated into an
agricultural MRV system.
IV. TOWARDS CARBON-SECO
The Carbon-SECO platform is under development to
support the development of applications related to managing
carbon emission/credits. An essential step in supporting
Carbon related applications is integrated access to data. This
is due to the diversity of context and data complexity. With
these integrated data, it is possible to calculate estimates of the
carbon “footprint” in rural properties. Moreover, we can carry
out simulations in the search for alternative solutions for crops
that make it possible to reduce emissions and increase the
carbon stock in the soil, as well as to identify patterns of crops
that produce good results. From this perspective, the platform
contributes to the mitigation of emissions and to the
generation of a positive balance that can be converted into
carbon credits.
The Carbon-SECO platform was developed considering
the following attributes: (1) Reproducibility: Carbon-SECO
provenance data is collected and stored securely and reliably
(Blockchain). This mechanism prevents arbitrary data
manipulation, either intentionally or inadvertently; (2)
Privacy: in Carbon-SECO, data is shared only between
authorized parties; (3) Transparency: All nodes in the network
(Carbon certificate players connected to a peer in the network)
can verify how the data in the chain (blockchain) was created
over time. As a result, all data updates can be tracked between
nodes; (4) Interoperability: carbon-related information
databases stores data in different formats.
Carbon-SECO is derived from our early SECO, a
Scientific Software Ecosystem (SSECO) [6], named E-SECO
[1, 18] developed in an E-Science joint project led by the
Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. As an evolution,
Carbon-SECO emphasizes mechanisms that bring intelligent
analysis, trust and traceability to data and processes in Carbon
certification projects. Figure 1 presents CarbonSECO main
services.
Figure 1. CarbonSECO platform main services
A. Data Source Service
As an initial effort, the bases integrated into the platform
are public and related to data from rural properties, namely:
registration of public and private rural properties (SIGEF)
[44], cartographic maps of the Brazilian municipal network
(IBGE) [21], mapping of the Brazilian vegetation cover
(MapBiomas) and the basis for calculating CO2 emissions
associated with 64 types of crops, planted pastures and
forestry in Brazilian municipalities (BRLUC) [17, 31].
For the carbon measurement process to be reliable, it must
be based on international guidelines and methodologies,
especially those proposed by the Inter-governmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC 1996; 2006) [23] as well as allow the
traceability of the entire process. Therefore, data must be
certified by official public bodies, non-governmental
organizations, or private institutions, which use public
collection, processing, and storage protocols. In this sense,
providing access to all players to provenance and blockchain
services is important.
The platform also foresees the possibility of integrating
monitoring data sent by satellite, such as deforestation alerts,
and the inclusion of data from studies of soil samples, data
from greenhouse effect gases captured by soil sensors, and
sensors present in animals, among others.
Once the GHG emission estimates are calculated for each
area, Carbon-SECO consolidate them to generate estimates
for the entire property. It is important to point out that this data
collection and integration process is traceable with the help of
the provenance service.
B. Data Integration Service
The Data Integration Layer provides an integrative view
of data. With the Global Schema database, a canonical model
was specified. This canonical model helps in provenance
storage since it uses PROVOne model [9]. This canonical
model reflects the static view of the related data. However, to
discover new connections between data, we also specified
new analysis considering the possibility of carbon credits,
through the use of a semantic model (an ontological model)
(Figure 2).
The use of ontology is intended to process new
relationships between data and derive new knowledge from
discovering these new relationships. As a result, a better
cultivation organization on a given rural property can improve
carbon credits on that property, for example. Kim and
Baumann [26] point out that efforts to grant credits and
incentives to those who reduce emissions or mitigate their
impacts can be hampered by the inability to account for the
quantity and impact of emissions transparently and uniformly.
The main ontological classes are Farm: represents rural
properties. Biome: represents the biome in which the farm
area is located. MapBiomas data (land use and land cover
maps) are classified by Brazilian biomes (Amazon, Caatinga,
Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pantanal, and Pampa). It is relevant
in the study of land cover and, consequently, in the emission
and carbon stock. Size: the size of the rural property. Areas:
cultivated areas (land use) within each rural property. The sum
of the areas results in the size of the property. The areas can
also be used for raising animals, whether with pasture
coverage or integration between livestock, crops, and forest.
The area was defined, in this study, as the lowest
organizational level of accounting for emission and stock of
greenhouse gases on a property. Coverage: the vegetation
cover represents the land use in each area within a property
(farm). Each type of cover (forest, pasture, soy, coffee, etc.)
or even its absence (in the case of degraded soils) may have
emission values and carbon stock in the rural properties soil
(farm). Animal: are ruminant animals raised on rural
properties). These animals emit greenhouse gases, such as
methane. Animal Type: types of animals raised on rural
property, such as cattle (cattle), goats (goats), and ovine
(sheep). Animal Breed: breed of animal that may be related
to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted. The
animals do not need to be computed by area, it is sufficient to
count them on the property (farm), considering that they can
be raised in confined areas or large areas integrated with other
crops. Greenhouse Gases (GHG): the amount (in tons per
year) of greenhouse gases emitted or sequestered in each area
or emitted by animals. Animals mainly emit methane (CH4).
Cultivated areas mainly emit CO2 (carbon dioxide) and N20
(nitrous oxide, from agricultural fertilizers) and sequester (or
capture) C02, depending on the type of soil cover. GHG
Type: type of greenhouse gases (CO2, N20, CH4). GHG
Measure Method: these are the methods used to account for
emissions. Initially, in the study, we are using BRLUC
(Brazilian Land Use Change) which has estimates of GHG
stock and emission by use and land cover at the municipal
level. However, other methods may be added to the platform,
as well as estimation methods or real values of GHG
emissions in animals. City and State: city and state where the
rural property is located.
Figure 2. Ontological Model main classes
 It is also important to point out that other variables can be Therefore, the ML service from the “Data Analysis
considered, such as the use of fertilizers in planting, the Service” was designed to give insights based on the farm
existence of crop rotation, and biomass calculation (volume of dataset. Based on the results, we can identify gaps in the
vegetation), among others. Currently, there are insufficient production, and check the average production, among other
data to compute these variables. About animals, in addition to specific calculus, and it is possible to optimize the carbon
type and breed, for example, food and life span can be credits production, contributing to a more sustainable farm.
considered. Therefore, as the model evolves, these and other With this action, farmers can avoid spending unnecessary
variables will gradually be taken into account. resources, reducing the economic impact on the farm.
C. Data Analysis Service
The impacts associated with GHG emissions are generally
perceived on a larger scale. Still, data analysis at the level of a
rural property can lead to the discovery of information that can
reduce emissions attributable to specific agricultural practices
and contribute to the impacts on a global scale. This
information enables support to farmers in management within
the perspective of sustainability. In this sense, the use of
techniques related to machine learning aims to identify and
extract land use patterns that are more appropriate for a given
rural property, considering its characteristics and variables
involved, such as location, size, and soil type, among others.
In this way, it is possible to make knowledge available to
enable choices of better conditions for soil use and cultivation
techniques.
Through monitoring and data collection by the “Data
Source Service”, data is aggregated, pre-processed, and stored
by the “Data Integration Service” before being sent to the
“Data Analysis Service”. Carbon-SECO uses two techniques
to process the information: inference processed over an
ontology and predictions based on ML algorithms. After pre-
processing, it is possible to instantiate the data in the
ontological model and, from there, run the inference
mechanisms, processing SWRL rules (the inference
processing of the ontology is executed in the “Data Analysis
Service”). Then, it is possible to provide a dataset with the
stored data for training and testing purposes with intelligent
ML algorithms.
The ontological processing uses Pellet as Reasoner to
make inferences and save the results. The Machine Learning
Prediction exports the trained algorithms in the pkcls 5
extension. These two modules communicate with the “Data
Integration Service” through a Python API. This API was
developed using the Flask 6 library and received all Data
Integration service requests related to the data analysis.
The Caron-SECO platform was designed to support a list
of ML algorithms and support the treatment and manipulation
of data for training. We can extract the dataset from the “Data
Integration Service” if we need to add a new feature. For
example, suppose it is necessary to predict the insertion of a
new crop in the property based on the available historical data
and the necessary predictions. In that case, we can select the
most appropriate ML algorithm for the predictions. Thus, ML Figure 3 - ProvOne model. Source: [9]
training is performed with the dataset, and at the end, the
algorithm with the best accuracy for the analyzed problem is To ensure the reliability, reproducibility, and integrity of
automatically selected. Different algorithms may present the information necessary for the certification process, all
other performances and accuracy for each problem. However, steps involved, from data collection and integration, as well as
the “Data Analysis Service” will choose the one with the ontological processing and use of ML techniques, must be
smallest Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and the available traceable and immutable to guarantee the integrity of the
computational infrastructure. process. These steps are recorded in the provenance and
blockchain services so that they can be reported and verified
as part of generating carbon credits.

5 6
https://orange3.readthedocs.io/projects/orange-visual- https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.2.x
programming/en/latest/exporting-models/index.html
D. Provenance Service
In the Carbon-SECO, provenance captures the history of
data from its origin, enabling traceability. Knowing the chain
of custody of the data that generates information and
subsidizes this entire process is important. For this, the
“Provenance Service” translates and integrates the
heterogeneous provenance data from different sources into the
ProvONE model (Figure 3), which is used as a standard and
integrator model in Carbon-SECO.
Each processed task in the platform represents
computational processing and has a set of input (ip) and output
(op) ports. These tasks consume data (di) as parameters in
their input ports and produce data (do) bound to the output
ports. Edges denote how these values flow from one task to
another and represent data dependencies between those tasks.
In Carbon-SECO, the mapping of provenance to the ProvONE
model (Figure 3) takes place by observing the invocation of
tasks and mainly the life cycle of the datasets consumed or
produced during the execution of any activity in the platform.
Considering the ProvONE model classes and relationships
(Figure 3), the task is mapped to the Program class of the
ProvONE model, and its input and output ports to the Port
class, where the relationship hasInport and hasOutport relate
them, respectively, to a Program (a task in the platform). To
reduce the volume of provenance data, we store the hash, i.e.,
the input path and output data, rather than the data, in the
blockchain. The Provenance Service, after mapping, sends
each piece of this collected provenance information (classes
and relationships) to the Blockchain Service. The Blockchain
Network then, after a series of transformations, records each
provenance transaction in the blockchain file system and
stores it in CouchDB7.
E. Blockchain
Considering the possibility of carbon credits being
represented to the market through smart contracts and their
respective certificates generated as digital assets, this entire
process can be supported by blockchain networks.
Figure 4 - Blockchain network in Carbon-SECO.
7
https://couchdb.apache.org
The Blockchain Service represents each rural property and
institution whose nodes are geographically distributed and
connected through instances of local machines or virtual
machines in the cloud. Figure 4 represents these nodes, where
each rural property or institution is connected to a node of a
blockchain network. In the Blockchain Service, all
provenance data collected will be stored in blocks and
distributed among peers. Each node participating in the
network has its copy of the ledger, thus allowing data
processing, auditing, and transparent querying by different
players executed in geographically distributed nodes. The
Blockchain was divided into two modules: on-chain and off-
chain. The on-chain module was implemented using the
Hyperledger Fabric platform. The off-chain was implemented
using Node.js technology and the Hyperledger Fabric SDK for
Node.js to interact with the Blockchain Network and used the
MongoDB database. All modules of the Hyperledger Fabric
architecture work based on Dockers container technology and
have been specified in yaml files and are initialized using the
docker-compose tool. Raft is the consensus protocol used.
F. Preliminary Results
To analyze the feasibility of the platform, data were
collected and integrated from the following public sources:
IBGE [21], SIGEF [44], MapBiomas, and BRLUC [31]. On
the website of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics), data were obtained from the vector representation
of the defining lines of state borders and municipal boundaries
[21]. The SIGEF data were obtained from the INCRA website
(National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform),
which contains georeferenced maps of the limits of rural,
public, and private properties [44].
The MapBiomas Project is a multi-institutional initiative
to generate annual maps of land use and land cover from
automatic classification processes applied to satellite images
[42]. Data on the coverage and land use of the Brazilian
territory were obtained from the MapBiomas website. On the
BRLUC (Brazilian Land Use Change) website, data on soil
carbon stock estimates were obtained. The BRLUC Method
[31] was developed to allow estimates of direct land use
changes and CO2 emissions associated with Brazilian
agricultural products.
To carry out the feasibility analysis, the data were
integrated, and then selected rural properties with diversified
soil covers, were used to calculate carbon stock estimates. We
used, as an example, the calculation of carbon stock for the
rural property identified as “Fazenda União”, located in the
municipality of Tombos/MG, Brazil. Table 1 shows the
calculation of carbon stock estimates in the soil of “Fazenda
União”, considering its vegetation cover, according to the land
cover and use map [42] and the values of carbon stock
estimates for the municipality from Tombos/MG, Brazil [31].
The calculated total carbon stock is approximately 7870 tCha-
1 (tons of carbon per hectare per year).
TABLE I. CARBON STOCK ESTIMATES AT FAZENDA UNIÃO, TOMBOS/MG/BR [3] Arulnathan V., Heidari M. D., Doyon M., Li E. and Pelletier N., “Farm-
level decision support tools: A review of methodological choices and
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