A global, empirical, harmonised dataset of soil organic carbon changes under perennial crops

Ledo, Alicia, Hillier, Jonathan, Smith, Pete, Aguilera, Eduardo, Blagodatskiy, Sergey, Brearley, Francis Q, Datta, Ashim, Diaz-Pines, Eugenio, Don, Axel, Dondini, Marta, Dunn, Jennifer, Feliciano, Diana Marisa, Liebig, Mark A, Lang, Rong, Llorente, Mireia, Zinn, Yuri Lopes, McNamara, Niall, Ogle, Stephen, Qin, Zhangcai, Rovira, Pere, Rowe, Rebecca, Vicente-Vicente, José Luis, Whitaker, Jeanette, Yue, Qian and Zerihun, Ayalsew (2019) A global, empirical, harmonised dataset of soil organic carbon changes under perennial crops. Scientific Data, 6. ISSN 2052-4463

Preview

Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

A global, unified dataset on Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) changes under perennial crops has not existed till now. We present a global, harmonised database on SOC change resulting from perennial crop cultivation. It contains information about 1605 paired-comparison empirical values (some of which are aggregated data) from 180 different peer-reviewed studies, 709 sites, on 58 different perennial crop types, from 32 countries in temperate, tropical and boreal areas; including species used for food, bioenergy and bio-products. The database also contains information on climate, soil characteristics, management and topography. This is the first such global compilation and will act as a baseline for SOC changes in perennial crops. It will be key to supporting global modelling of land use and carbon cycle feedbacks, and supporting agricultural policy development.