A global, empirical, harmonised dataset of soil organic carbon changes under perennial crops
Open accessAbstract
A global, unified dataset on Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) changes under perennial crops has not existed till now. We present a global, harmonised database on SOC change resulting from perennial crop cultivation. It contains information about 1605 paired-comparison empirical values (some of which are aggregated data) from 180 different peer-reviewed studies, 709 sites, on 58 different perennial crop types, from 32 countries in temperate, tropical and boreal areas; including species used for food, bioenergy and bio-products. The database also contains information on climate, soil characteristics, management and topography. This is the first such global compilation and will act as a baseline for SOC changes in perennial crops. It will be key to supporting global modelling of land use and carbon cycle feedbacks, and supporting agricultural policy development.
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Changes in bulk density (BD) after and before perennials could not be analyzed because those data were missing from the original dataset.
“In particular, we were not able to analyze changes in BD after and before perennials since those data were missing from the original dataset (see Ledo et al., 2019 for further details).”
From Changes in soil organic carbon under perennial crops (2020) · cites this paper as Ledo et al., 2019
Methods > Unifying units says missing bulk-density values were left as NA and only 51% of studies reported BD, supporting a data-availability limitation. Methods > Empirical data gathering describes paired current and previous soil-characteristic values. The paper does not say that before-and-after BD changes could not be analyzed; the citing authors’ inability to perform that analysis is their own conclusion. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredTo date there has been a lack of evidence about the capacity of perennial crops to store SOC.
“Nonetheless, to date there has been a lack of evidence about the capacity of perennial crops to store SOC (Ledo et al., 2019).”
From Changes in soil organic carbon under perennial crops (2020) · cites this paper as Ledo et al., 2019
Many of the crops in the dataset were not duplicated.
“Second, and more importantly, many of the crops in the dataset were not duplicated (Ledo et al., 2019; Table S1), specifying crop type as random effect would be an obvious confounding factor.”
From Changes in soil organic carbon under perennial crops (2020) · cites this paper as Ledo et al., 2019
The Background & Summary reports 58 crops and 1,605 entries, while Data Records points to a crop list in Online-only Table 1. The passages in our copy do not give the number of entries per crop or say how many crop types occur only once; searches for crop duplication and entries per crop did not establish the claim. (LLM, conf=0.72)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
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- Authors
- Ledo, A., Hillier, J., Smith, P., Aguilera, E., Blagodatskiy, S., Brearley, F. Q., Datta, A., Diaz-Pines, E., Don, A., Dondini, M., Dunn, J., Feliciano, D. M., Liebig, M. A., Lang, R., Llorente, M., Zinn, Y. L., McNamara, N., Ogle, S., Qin, Z., Rovira, P., Rowe, R., Vicente-Vicente, J. L., Whitaker, J., Yue, Q., & Zerihun, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Aberdeen (GB)
- Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ES)
- University of Hohenheim (DE)
- Manchester Metropolitan University (GB)
- Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (IN)
- Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut (DE)
- Argonne National Laboratory (US)
- Agricultural Research Service (US)
- Universidad de Extremadura (ES)
- Universidade Federal de Lavras (BR)
- UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (GB)
- Colorado State University (US)
- Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (ES)
- Curtin University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Ledo, Alicia
- ORCID
- Ledo, Alicia
- Smith, Pete
- Aguilera, Eduardo
- Blagodatskiy, Sergey
- Brearley, Francis Q.
- Datta, Ashim
- Don, Axel
- Dondini, Marta
- Dunn, Jennifer
- Feliciano, Diana Marisa
- Liebig, Mark A.
- Lang, Rong
- Llorente, Mireia
- Zinn, Yuri Lopes
- McNamara, Niall
- Ogle, Stephen
- Qin, Zhangcai
- Rovira, Pere
- Rowe, Rebecca
- Whitaker, Jeanette
- Zerihun, Ayalsew
- Venue
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2019-05-13
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 57-57
- ISSN
- 2052-4463 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6514006
- OpenAlex
- W2946000168
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3
- Type
- data paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Data (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- NERC Open Research Archive (Natural Environment Research Council) (acceptedVersion)
- e-space (Manchester Metropolitan University) (acceptedVersion)
- Figshare (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- TeesRep (Teesside University) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- Repositori ObertUDL (University of Lleida) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- Teesside University Research Portal (Teesside University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Aberdeen University Research Archive (Aberdeen University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- eSpace (Curtin University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Publication Database PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)) (submittedVersion)
- OpenAgrar (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- RCUK | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/P027784/1)
- Österreichische Gesellschaft für Dermatologie und Venerologie (NE/N017854/1)
- CNPq
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil erosion and sediment transport
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Soil Geostatistics and Mapping
- Keywords
- soil organic carbon, perennial crops, soil carbon change, energy crops, bioproducts, land use change, carbon cycle feedbacks, soil management, topography, climate, soil properties
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