• Energy Research

The short list of practices is the result of literature review and expert panel input and a step wise process of considering certain critical measures (e.g. increase of soil organic carbon (SOC); greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction e.g. carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane; system integration). The list is based on a range of practices already proposed to deliver soil carbon sequestration (SCS). First, specific practices were identified with potential for both a positive impact on SCS at farm level and an uptake rate compatible with global impact. These focus on: (a) optimising crop primary productivity; (b) reducing soil disturbance and managing soil physical properties; (c) minimising deliberate removal of C or lateral transport via erosion; (d) addition of C produced outside the system; (e) provision of additional C inputs within the cropping system. Then, economic and non‐cost barriers and incentives for land managers are considered, along with the potential externalised impacts of implementation. The provided data presents a list of greenhouse gas removal practices for soil organic carbon sequestration, which are suitable under biophysical, economic and social consideration. The list is the result of the first step in analysing the potential of agricultural soils to sequester carbon globally and is part of the NERC funded project Soils-R-GGREAT (NE/P019455/1). The work is based on literature research and expert panel and judgements. The work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/P019455/1)

Global spatial data on yields of wheat, sugarcane and maize at 0.25 and 0.5 degrees resolution for 2000-2014. Annual data on wheat, sugarcane and maize yield have been extracted from agricultural statistics, which are recorded annually at regional and national scale depending on the country. The yield data were spatially disaggregated to produce gridded maps (0.25 and 0.5 degrees spatial resolution) of yields per crop type. The earthstat dataset, which provides gridded data on crop distribution (i.e. a crop mask for 2000q), was used to obtain information on the spatial distribution of wheat, sugarcane and maize across the world. The spatial disaggregation process was repeated for every year between 2000 and 2014. The data were produced to constrain agro-ecosystem carbon cycling estimates used in large-scale atmospheric CO2 inversion studies and to be used as inputs in agro-ecosystem biogeochemistry models. The data are provided in netcdf4 (.nc) format. The data were produced by spatially disaggregating annual agricultural statistics-based estimates of harvest yields for wheat, maize and sugarcane. Annual yield data for wheat, maize and sugarcane were collected from national and international institutions (e.g. Eurostat, USDA, and FAO). This information was (1) combined with gridded data on wheat, sugarcane and maize distribution obtained from the earthstat dataset in order to (2) to produce gridded yield information across the world. Where subnational scale yield data were available (i.e. country, state, region-specific value provided by e.g. Eurostat and USDA) they were used. Where subnational yield data were not available the national average was used. Where no data were available no crop yield estimates have been added to the final gridded dataset.