FAOSTAT estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from biomass and peat fires

Simone Rossi,Paolo Prosperi,Heather Jacobs,Joanna I House,Mirella Salvatore,Luigi Boschetti,Riccardo Biancalani,Francesco N Tubiello

doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1584-y

Abstract

The Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED3) and the FAOSTAT Emissions database, containing estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from biomass burning and peat fires, are compared. The two datasets formed the basis for several analyses in the fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5), and thus represent a critical source of information for emissions inventories at national, regional and global level. The two databases differ in their level of computational complexity in estimating emissions. While both use the same burned area information from remote sensing, estimates of available biomass are computed in GFED3 at tier 3 using a complex dynamic vegetation model, while they are computed in FAOSTAT using default, tier 1 parameters from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Over the analysis period 1997–2011, the two methods were found to produce very similar global GHG emissions estimates for each of the five GFED aggregated biomass fire classes: i) Savanna; ii) Woodland; iii) Forest; iv) Deforestation; v) Peatlands; with total emissions ranging 6–8 Gt CO2eq yr-1. The main differences between the two datasets were found with respect to peat fires, with FAOSTAT showing a lower 1997–1998 peak in emissions compared with GFED3, within an otherwise good agreement for the rest of the study period, when limited to the three tropical countries covered by GFED. Conversely, FAOSTAT global emissions from peat fires, including both boreal and tropical regions, were several times larger than those currently estimated by GFED3. Results show that FAOSTAT activity data and emission estimates for biomass fires offer a robust alternative to the more sophisticated GFED data, representing a valuable resource for national GHG inventory experts, especially in countries where technical and institutional constraints may limit access, generation and maintenance of more complex methodologies and data.

Highlights

Biomass fires emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, where they affect the interannual variability and growth rate of CO2, CH4 and N2O and other trace gases (Smith et al 2014)
Global Fire Emissions Database version 3.1 (GFED3)-BA is largely based on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Direct Broadcast Burned Area Monthly L3 Global 500 m product (MCD64A1) (Giglio et al 2009), with time coverage extended to the pre-MODIS era back to June 1996, by harmonizing MODIS data with those from other sensors, namely the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) family of sensors
GHG emissions from biomass burning produced by GFED3 and FAOSTAT were compared over the period 1997–2011, at both global scale and grid cell level

Summary

Introduction

Biomass fires emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, where they affect the interannual variability and growth rate of CO2, CH4 and N2O and other trace gases (Smith et al 2014). Anthropogenic emissions of non-CO2 gases from peat and forest fires were 300 million tCO2eq yr-1 on average over the period 2001–2010 (Smith et al 2014), with prescribed burning of savanna adding 200 million tCO2eq yr-1 (Tubiello et al 2014). Specific fire emission categories are significant in terms of their overall regional impacts. In Africa, prescribed burning of savanna represents 25 % of total agricultural emissions (Tubiello et al 2014). In South-east Asia, fires in drained tropical peatland, often linked to palm oil cultivation, can lead to significant emissions in specific years, with impacts seen at large regional and even global scales (Hayasaka et al 2014)

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