South East Queensland is set to become one of Australia's hotspots for carbon sequestration following the new partnership between South East Queensland Catchments and Australia’s leading not-for-profit carbon trading organisation, Landcare CarbonSMART.

SEQ Catchments is a community based business that sources and coordinates investment in activities that help South East Queensland to a sustainable future and restores natural resources for the benefit of future generations.

It has appointed the state’s first 'super assessor', farm forestry officer Paul Daly, who will be responsible for assessing and registering carbon sinks based on biodiverse landcare revegetation plantings on private land.

"We believe the Landcare CarbonSMART model of assisting rural landholders to regenerate land parcels not being used for agriculture is excellent," Mr Daly said.

"It not only delivers the landholder an income stream from carbon credits, it also delivers the inherent benefits of revegetation including stock and crop protection, improvement of erosion and soil salinity problems and invigorated biodiversity, all of which promotes greater productivity on the land."

Landcare CarbonSMART provides financial incentives for landholders to maintain eligible carbon credit vegetation on their land.

The amount of carbon absorbed by vegetation is calculated and sold to individuals and businesses to help them take responsibility for carbon emissions.

Landcare CarbonSMART operates as a carbon pool with a majority percentage of sales paid to the landholder, a percentage to a recovery fund (in case of vegetation failure or unavoidable destruction cause by fire or disease) and a percentage to the management and operation of the pool.

Landholders receive annual payments and when the price of carbon rises, so too will payments to landholders with the value of carbon trading is estimated to be worth US$3.1 trillion by 2020.

"South East Queensland has one of the best profiles in the country for carbon sequestration and with so many people choosing to make the area their home it makes sense to protect and enhance the beauty, environmental and lifestyle values of the region," said Landcare CarbonSMART managing director, Matt Reddy.