Conditions and changing capacity. In agricultural areas the amount of carbon stored in soils is nearly double that stored in the crops and pastures that the soils support. Still, the share of carbon stored in agroecosystems (about 26-28 percent of all carbon stored in terrestrial sysrtems) is about equal to the share of land devoted to agroecosystems (28 percent of all land). Agricultural emissions of both carbon dioxide and methane are significant and increasing because of conversion to agricultural uses from forests or woody savannas, deliberate burning of crop stubble and pastures to control pests or promote fertility, and paddy rice cultivation.

Data quality.Storage capacity is modeled for vegetation and soils based on carbon storage capacity by land cover type at a resolution of halflution of half a degree for a single point in time. Data would be improved by better characterization of agricultural land-cover types and their vegetation content. Regionally modeled data exist for Latin America in the International Soil Reference and Information Centre's Soil and Terrain database.