Impact of Healthy Diet Shifts on Soil Greenhouse Gas Emissions Across Europe

This datasets include the impact of shifting toward healthy diets (LANCET) to Greenhouse Gas Emissions across Europe.The dataset includes different scenarios of diet adoption (100%, 30%, 10%) and projections for 2100 as well. Besides CO2 removal, we also included impacts on N2O emissions and how afforestation can mitigate the loss of GHG
Resource Type: 
Datasets
Soil Functions Data
Registration is requested: 
Yes
Year: 
2025

Title: Impact of Healthy Diet Shifts on Soil Greenhouse Gas Emissions Across Europe
Description: Shifting towards healthy, plant-based diets is widely recognized as a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from food systems, primarily through reduced methane emissions from livestock. However, the implications of this transition for soil-based GHG emissions, a major contributor to climate change, remain uncertain. We used the MAGNET economic model and the DayCent biogeochemical model to assess the impacts of dietary shifts aligned with the EAT-Lancet guidelines on soil organic carbon (SOC), nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, and the soil GHG balance across the European Union and the United Kingdom. Adopting the EAT-Lancet diet reduced livestock production, organic carbon (C) and organic nitrogen (N) inputs from manure, and permanent grassland areas for agricultural use. This results in potential SOC losses of an EU average of 14 Mg CO2e ha−1 and reaching up to 50 Mg CO2e ha−1 in livestock-intensive regions by 2100. However, afforestation of land released from production could offset approximately half of the diet-induced soil C losses by 2100. When above-ground biomass from afforestation is factored in, this could yield an additional 65 Mg C ha−1 in afforested areas, resulting in net CO2 removal at the European scale. N2O emissions exhibited more moderate and heterogeneous changes by 2100, ranging from 10 to −13 Mg CO2e ha−1 across the continent, and dependent on land use change (LUC) and increased synthetic N inputs.

The following datasets are available:

  • GHG balance_scenario 100.tif: Spatial distribution of the net soil GHG balance across EU-27 + UK under the 100% diet shift scenario compared with the baseline (as fig. 7 of the publication)
  • GHG balance_scenario_30.tif: Spatial distribution of net soil GHG balance across EU + UK under the 30% diet shift scenario compared with the baseline for the period 2030–2100 (as figure S8 of the publication)
  • GHG balance_scenario_10.tif: Spatial distribution of net soil GHG balance across EU + UK under the 10% diet shift scenario compared with the baseline for the period 2030–2100 (as figure S4 of the publication). 
  • Afforestation_mask.tif: Afforestation mask
    • N2O_EU_Day_bs.tif: Baseline N2O stack
    • SOC_stock30_allLU_1km.tif: Reference SOC stock (e.g. forest reference aka equilibrium) 
    • CLC30bs.tif: CLC raster at 30m (or 1km) baseline 
    • N2O_EU_DayC_diet.tif: Diet N2O scenario raster stack (must exist) 
    • ID_country raster.tif: EU-27 + UK integer country codes 
    • OM_EU_DayC_diet.tif: SOC initial raster stack (diet) 
    • Afforestation.R: R code to generate Figure 6 
    • MS_code.txt: EU-27 + UK country codes


Spatial coverage: EU 27 + UK
Pixel size: 1km x 1km
Temporal coverage: 2009 (Baseline) - 22030 - 2050.
Projection: ETRS89-extended / LAEA Europe

Reference: Michailidis, V., Lugato, E., Panagos, P., Freund, F. and Abalos, D., 2025. Impact of Healthy Diet Shifts on Soil Greenhouse Gas Emissions Across Europe. Global Change Biology, 31(11):  p.e70624.

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Reference of source (Citations) :

Michailidis, V., Lugato, E., Panagos, P., Freund, F. and Abalos, D., 2025. Impact of Healthy Diet Shifts on Soil Greenhouse Gas Emissions Across Europe. Global Change Biology, 31(11):  p.e70624.

When making reference to the ESDAC

  • Panagos, P., Van Liedekerke, M., Borrelli, P., Köninger, J., Ballabio, C., Orgiazzi, A., Lugato, E., Liakos, L., Hervas, J., Jones, A.  Montanarella, L. 2022. European Soil Data Centre 2.0: Soil data and knowledge in support of the EU policies. European Journal of Soil Science, 73(6), e13315. DOI: 10.1111/ejss.13315
  • Panagos P., Van Liedekerke M., Jones A., Montanarella L., “European Soil Data Centre: Response to European policy support and public data requirements”; (2012) Land Use Policy, 29 (2), pp. 329-338. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.07.003
  • European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu, European Commission, Joint Research Centre