Harmonized World Soil Database - HWSD (version 1.2)

HWSD-coverDuring discussions at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in 1996, the need was identified for refinement of the agro-edaphic element of IIASA and FAO's Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology then being used for IIASA’s "Modeling Land Use and Land Cover Change in Europe and Northern Eurasia (LUC)" project. An IIASA Interim Report was produced in 1997 detailing twenty soil attributes identified as being important for land evaluation, the analyses performed on existing databases, and methodologies for the development of taxotransfer rules to derive necessary data. Conclusions of this report were used for the analyses of that time, but the process that was born continued to develop into what would eventually become a separate product, the Harmonized World Soil Database. Between 2003 and 2006, IIASA and FAO sought out additional partners, including: - ISRIC-World Soil Information, together with FAO, were responsible for the development of regional soil and terrain databases and the WISE soil profile database; - the European Soil Bureau Network, which had recently completed a major update of soil information for Europe and northern Eurasia, and - the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which provided the recent 1:1,000,000 scale Soil Map of China. Vast volumes of recently collected regional and national updates of soil information collected by the partners were assimilated and harmonized by IIASA, where the HWSD raster, database, and viewer software were designed, implemented, and packaged for CD and web distribution into this state-of-the-art database. Version 1.0 was released in 2008. Since then, it has been updated with new information several times, has been used extensively around the world, and has recently been adopted by the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) as the definitive soil database at present, with plans for further updates made as part of the GSP process. The HWSD is of immediate use in the context of the Climate Change Convention and the Kyoto Protocol for soil carbon measurements and for the FAO/IIASA Global Agro-ecological Assessment studies (GAEZ 2012), for which HWSD was developed in the first place. The HWSD contributes sound scientific knowledge for planning sustainable expansion of agricultural production to achieve food security and provides information for national and international policymakers in addressing emerging problems of land competition for food production, bio-energy demand and threats to biodiversity. The HWSD is a 30 arc-second raster database with over 16000 different soil mapping units that combines existing regional and national updates of soil information worldwide (SOTER, ESD, Soil Map of China, WISE) with the information contained within the 1:5 000 000 scale FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World (FAO, 19711981). The resulting raster database consists of 21600 rows and 43200 columns, which are linked to harmonized soil property data. The use of a standardized structure allows for the linkage of the attribute data with the raster map to display or query the composition in terms of soil units and the characterization of selected soil parameters (organic Carbon, pH, water storage capacity, soil depth, cation exchange capacity of the soil and the clay fraction, total exchangeable nutrients, lime and gypsum contents, sodium exchange percentage, salinity, textural class and granulometry). Reliability of the information contained in the database is variable: the parts of the database that still make use of the Soil Map of the World such as North America, Australia, West Africa and South Asia are considered less reliable, while most of the areas covered by SOTER databases are considered to have the highest reliability (Central and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe)

Potential impacts on ecosystem services of land use transitions to second-generation bioenergy crops in GB

We present the first assessment of the impact of land use change (LUC) to second-generation (2G) bioenergy crops on ecosystem services (ES) resolved spatially for Great Britain (GB). A systematic approach was used to assess available evidence on the impacts of LUC from arable, semi-improved grassland or woodland/forest, to 2G bioenergy crops, for which a quantitative ‘threat matrix’ was developed. The threat matrix was used to estimate potential impacts of transitions to either Miscanthus, short-rotation coppice (SRC, willow and poplar) or short-rotation forestry (SRF). The ES effects were found to be largely dependent on previous land uses rather than the choice of 2G crop when assessing the technical potential of available biomass with a transition from arable crops resulting in the most positive effect on ES. Combining these data with constraint masks and available land for SRC and Miscanthus (SRF omitted from this stage due to lack of data), south-west and north-west England were identified as areas where Miscanthus and SRC could be grown, respectively, with favourable combinations of economic viability, carbon sequestration, high yield and positive ES benefits. This study also suggests that not all prospective planting of Miscanthus and SRC can be allocated to agricultural land class (ALC) ALC 3 and ALC 4 and suitable areas of ALC 5 are only minimally available. Beneficial impacts were found on 146 583 and 71 890 ha when planting Miscanthus or SRC, respectively, under baseline planting conditions rising to 293 247 and 91 318 ha, respectively, under 2020 planting scenarios. The results provide an insight into the interplay between land availability, original land uses, bioenergy crop type and yield in determining overall positive or negative impacts of bioenergy cropping on ecosystems services and go some way towards developing a framework for quantifying wider ES impacts of this important LUC

Modeled spatial assessment of biomass productivity and technical potential of Miscanthus× giganteus, Panicum virgatum L. and Jatropha on marginal land in China

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was supported by Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC). We thank our colleagues from Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences for data collection, and thank Tao Sang from the Institute of Botany of Chinese Academy of Sciences for providing data. The MiscanFor modeling was supported by UK NERC ADVENT (NE/1806209) and FAB-GGR (NE/P019951/1) project funding. John Clifton-Brown received support from the United Kingdom's DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) as part of the MISCOMAR project (FACCE SURPLUS, Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture for food and non-food systems)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Global wetland contribution to 2000-2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics

Increasing atmospheric methane (CH4) concentrations have contributed to approximately 20% of anthropogenic climate change. Despite the importance of CH4 as a greenhouse gas, its atmospheric growth rate and dynamics over the past two decades, which include a stabilization period (1999–2006), followed by renewed growth starting in 2007, remain poorly understood. We provide an updated estimate of CH4 emissions from wetlands, the largest natural global CH4 source, for 2000–2012 using an ensemble of biogeochemical models constrained with remote sensing surface inundation and inventory-based wetland area data. Between 2000–2012, boreal wetland CH4 emissions increased by 1.2 Tg yr−1 (−0.2–3.5 Tg yr−1), tropical emissions decreased by 0.9 Tg yr−1 (−3.2−1.1 Tg yr−1), yet globally, emissions remained unchanged at 184 ± 22 Tg yr−1. Changing air temperature was responsible for increasing high-latitude emissions whereas declines in low-latitude wetland area decreased tropical emissions; both dynamics are consistent with features of predicted centennial-scale climate change impacts on wetland CH4 emissions. Despite uncertainties in wetland area mapping, our study shows that global wetland CH4 emissions have not contributed significantly to the period of renewed atmospheric CH4 growth, and is consistent with findings from studies that indicate some combination of increasing fossil fuel and agriculture-related CH4 emissions, and a decrease in the atmospheric oxidative sink

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) : Finding the win–wins for energy, negative emissions and ecosystem services—size matters

Funding information Natural Environment Research Council, Grant/Award Number: NE/M019764/1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the NERC-funded UK Energy Research Centre, by the NERC project Addressing the Valuation of Energy and Nature Together (ADVENT, NE/M019764/1) and by The University of California, Davis with CD the recipient of a NERC PhD studentship (1790094). It also contributed to the NERC FAB-GGR project (NE/M019691/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Yield-scaled mitigation of ammonia emission from N fertilization: the Spanish case

Online supplementary data available from stacks.iop.org/ERL/9/125005/mmedia[EN] Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer and field application of livestock manure are the major sources of ammonia (NH3) volatilization. This N loss may decrease crop productivity and subsequent deposition promotes environmental problems associated with soil acidification and eutrophication. Mitigation measures may have associated side effects such as decreased crop productivity (e.g. if N fertilizer application is reduced), or the release of other reactive N compounds (e.g. N2O emissions if manure is incorporated). Here, we present a novel methodology to provide an integrated assessment of the best strategies to abate NH3 from N applications to crops. Using scenario analyses, we assessed the potential of 11 mitigation measures to reduce NH3 volatilization while accounting for their side effects on crop productivity, N use efficiency (NUE) and N surplus (used as an indicator of potential N losses by denitrification/nitrification and NO3 − leaching/run-off). Spain, including its 48 provinces, was selected as a case study as it is the third major producer of agricultural goods in Europe, and also the European country with the highest increase in NH3 emissions from 1990 to 2011. Mitigation scenarios comprised of individual measures and combinations of strategies were evaluated at a country- and regional level. Compared to the reference situation of standard practices for the year 2008, implementation of the most effective region-specific mitigation strategy led to 63% NH3 mitigation at the country level. Implementation of a single strategy for all regions reduced NH3 by 57% at the highest. Strategies that involved combining mitigation measures produced the largest NH3 abatement in all cases, with an 80% reduction in some regions. Among the strategies analyzed, only suppression of urea application combined with manure incorporation and incorporation of N synthetic fertilizers other than urea showed a fully beneficial situation: yieldscaled NH3 emissions were reduced by 82%, N surplus was reduced by 9%, NUE was increased by 19% and yield was around 98% that of the reference situation. This study shows that the adoption of viable measures may provide an opportunity for countries like Spain to meet the international agreements on NH3 mitigation, while maintaining crop yields and increasing NUEThe authors are grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Autonomous Community of Madrid for their economic support through the NEREA project (AGL2012-37815- C05-01, AGL2012-37815-C05-04) and GASPORC (AGL2011-30023-C03) projects. We wish to thank the FIRE (Federation Ile de France de Recherche en Environment, CNRS and UPMC) as well as the Agrisost Project (S2009/AGR-1630). Eduardo Aguilera gratefully acknowledges funding by the 895-2011-1020 project (Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council). This paper has been produced within the context of the REMEDIA network (http://redremedia.wordpress.com).Sanz-Cobeña, A.; Lassaletta, L.; Estellés, F.; Del Prado, A.; Guardia Guardia, G.; Abalos, D.; Aguilera, E.... (2014). Yield-scaled mitigation of ammonia emission from N fertilization: the Spanish case. Environmental Research Letters. 9(12):1-12. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/125005S11291