Annual emissions of carbon from land use, land-use change, and forestry from 1850 to 2020

Houghton, Richard A.; Castanho, Andrea

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2025-2023

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2025-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2025-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

Data description paper

|

23 May 2023

Data description paper |

| 23 May 2023

Annual emissions of carbon from land use, land-use change, and forestry from 1850 to 2020

Richard A. Houghton and Andrea Castanho

Data sets

Annual emissions of carbon from land use, land-use change, and forestry 1850-2020 Richard Houghton and Andrea Castanho https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/U7GHRH

FAOSTAT Statistical Database FAO http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/\#data/

Short summary

We update a previous analysis of carbon emissions (annual and national) from land use, land-use change, and forestry from 1850 to 2020. We use data from the latest (2020) Global Forest Resources Assessment, incorporate shifting cultivation, and include improvements to the bookkeeping model and recent estimates of emissions from peatlands. Net global emissions declined steadily over the decade from 2011 to 2020 (mean of 0.96 Pg C yr⁻¹), falling below 1.0 Pg C yr⁻¹ for the first time in 30 years.