Historical CO 2 emission and concentrations due to land use change of croplands and pastures by country

Abstract

This work is aimed at estimating the historical land use change emission and concentrations of CO 2 by country. Calculating the area differences of each biome (associated to carbon factors) converted to cropland (including urban areas) and pastures by country we calculated the land use change CO 2 emission over the past 300 years using a new dataset, which is a well known one in the literature: the HYDE land use database. According to IPCC-SR-LULUCF (2000) the net cumulative global CO 2 emission from land use change (1850–1990) is estimated to have been 499±205 Tg CO 2, our result is 360 Tg CO 2 for the same period, and Houghton's (Houghton, RA, 2003a. Revised estimates of the annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land management 1850–2000. Tellus 55B, 378–390) result is 492 Tg CO 2. We have also used the Bern model (IPCC-TAR-WG1, 2001) of decay time of CO 2 to estimate the concentrations of CO 2 in the year 1990 due to land use change emission, once the CO 2 emission from the past is still decaying in the atmosphere.