Global Soil Organic Carbon Estimates and the Harmonized World Soil Database

Year: 
2015

Global Soil Organic Carbon Estimates and the Harmonized World Soil Database Global estimates of soil organic carbon stocks have been produced in the past to support the calculation of potential emissions of CO2 from the soil under scenarios of change land use/cover and climatic conditions (IPCC, 2006), but very few global estimates are presented as spatial data. For global spatial layers on soil parameters, the most recent and complete dataset is available as the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD). The amended HWSD was compared to data from 4 other global data sets on SOC stocks. The comparative evaluation has demonstrated that bulk density is the most important factor for estimating SOC stocks and mainly responsible for the differences between estimates. Most affected from the variability in bulk density are SOC stocks in areas with soils which are high in organic carbon. Author(s): R. Hiederer, M. Köchy 2012 – 79 pp. – EUR 25225 EN – EUR Scientific and Technical Research series – ISSN 1831-9424 (online), ISSN 1018-5593 (print), ISBN 978-92-79-23108-7, doi:10.2788/13267 Download report: (Size: 1.5 MB) Preview FrontPage : Last Update: 20/03/2012