The "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from drained organic soils" group describes and disseminates the geospatial data from which FAOSTAT statistics on drained organic soils are derived. The dataset includes six layers: drained area of cropland organic soils and corresponding CO2 and N2O emissions and drained area of grassland organic soils and associate N2O and CO2 emissions for the years 1992 – 2020. The drained area layers are in “hectares” and the GHG emissions layers in “tonnes/hectare”.
Organic soils are wet soils ecosystems, characterized by high levels of organic matter, which accumulates under the anoxic conditions that exist in the presence of water. They include tropical and boreal peatlands, high-latitude bogs, ferns and mires. While organic soils cover globally a mere 3 percent of the terrestrial land area, they represent up to 30 percent of the total soil carbon, playing an important role in maintaining the earth’s carbon balance. Agriculture is a major cause of drainage of organic soils around the world and restoration of degraded organic soils is currently a priority in several countries as part of their commitments under the climate convention.
The GHG emissions from drained organic soils dataset are computed in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform applying Tier I methods from the Intergovernmental Guidelines on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC, 2014). FAOSTAT estimates use histosols as a proxy for the presence of organic soils, in agreement with IPCC and annual land cover maps as time-dependent component for yearly cropland and grassland extents. Finally, a geospatial layer of the distribution of ruminants from the FAO Gridded Livestock of the World is used to identify grassland used for grazing.
