| 27 Jul 2026
The EDGAR-LULUCF Dataset of forest-related carbon emissions and removals
Abstract. The EDGAR database provides a consistent global inventory of anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and removals, widely used in major global studies and assessments, but until recently lacked estimates from the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) sector.
LULUCF plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change, mostly through conserving and enhancing the forest sink and by reducing emissions from deforestation and peatland degradation. LULUCF is the most challenging sector in National GHG Inventory (NGHGI) reporting, due to the combination of complex biophysical processes paired with demanding data collection needs, potentially resulting in high uncertainties. Emission coverage and quality vary between countries, with advanced techniques applied in more developed nations, whereas important forested areas worldwide may lack reliable estimates.
This work presents new global, country-level estimates for carbon stock changes in living biomass from managed Forest Land and Deforestation. In both cases, a globally coherent IPCC Tier 1 gain-loss approach with regionally differentiated parameters is used, combined with spatially-explicit Earth Observation-derived land use data and official statistics. Deforestation estimates are based on the new "Global Maps of Forest Cover Changes and their Drivers" from the EU Observatory on Deforestation and Forest Degradation.
For Forest Land, we implemented a few methodological improvements to existing IPCC guidance in order to address limitations of the Tier 1 approach: (i) a third forest age class (>100 years) to avoid overestimating gains; (ii) a corrected IPCC fuelwood formula to eliminate double-counting; (iii) fuelwood adjustments for Southern Asia; (iv) country-specific illegal logging corrections.
Global net CO₂ removals from Forest Land over 2001–2021 averaged −7.0 Gt CO₂ yr⁻¹ showing a declining trend linked to rising harvest rates, while Deforestation emitted on average 4.7 Gt CO₂ yr⁻¹, leading to a combined -2.3 Gt CO₂ yr⁻¹ removal. These estimates are compared with the countries’ official reporting to the UNFCCC and with other independent datasets and the results are discussed.
Overall, this EO-based Tier 1 dataset fills a critical gap in EDGAR reporting by providing a transparent, IPCC-compliant global benchmark against which NGHGIs may be compared, or that can be used to fill gaps in Non-Annex I countries with limited reporting.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Earth System Science Data.
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