Historic Land Use and Carbon Estimates for South and Southeast Asia, 1880-1980 (CDIAC NDP-046)

This digital database contains estimates of land use change and the carbon content of vegetation for South and Southeast Asia for the years 1880, 1920, 1950, 1970, and 1980. The data were originally collected for climate modelers so they could reduce the uncertainty associated with the magnitude and time course of historical land use change and carbon release. For this database, South and Southeast Asia is defined as encompassing nearly 8 x 10^6 km2 of the earth's land surface and includes the countries of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Kampuchea (Cambodia), Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The sources of land use data range from descriptive information to official estimates corroborated by full cadastral survey or satellite and vegetation maps. The sources of human population data range from unofficial published estimates to official census data. The sources of livestock population data range from extrapolations from human population data to livestock estimates based on regular censuses supplemented by spot checks or slaughter records. The quality of the data variables in each ecological zone is ranked according to systems described in the Descriptive File on the Magnetic Media which is on-line at [http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp046/ndp046.doc].

The most important change in land use over this 100-year period was the conversion of 107 x 10^6 ha of forest/woodland to categories with lower biomass. Land thus transformed accounted for 13.5% of the total area of the study region. The estimated total carbon content of live vegetation in South and Southeast Asia has dropped progressively, from 59 x10^9 Mg in 1880 to 27 x 10^9 Mg in 1980.

Throughout the study period, the carbon stock in forests was greater than the carbon content in all other categories combined, although its share of the total declined progressively from 81% in 1880 to 73% in 1980.

The database was developed in Lotus 1-2-3TM by using a sequential bookkeeping model. The source data were obtained at the local and regional level for each country from official agricultural and economic statistics (e.g., the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization); historical geographic and demographic texts, reports, and articles; and any other available source. Because of boundary changes through time and disparities between the validity, availability, and scale of the data for each country, the data were aggregated into 94 ecological zones. The resulting database contains land use and carbon information for 94 ecological zones and national totals for 13 countries. In addition to these, a descriptive file that explains the contents and format of each data file and four FORTRAN and SAS TM retrieval programs for use with the ASCII data files are included.