Tillage activity data sources

Regrow's tillage activity data is an input for on-field emissions quantification (both DNDC modeling when available and IPCC calculations), as well as tillage machinery emissions.  Tillage activity data comes from a combination of Monitor (when available), and global datasets. When field-level Monitor residue data is not available, default data are used at the crop × country level based on best available sources and geographic coverage.

Data sources

Modeling or calculating on-field emissions from tillage activity and emissions from operating tillage machinery requires the following activity inputs:

• Tillage intensity: no till, reduced till, conventional till
• Number of tillage passes

Regrow’s default tillage practice data is designed to provide field-level tillage activity data when available, and use a curated 'best available' default data set at crop<>country level when field level data is not available.

Primary data source

Monitor field-level tillage intensity

In regions where Monitor is available, tillage intensity & passes are used directly as input to emissions calculations. Current Monitor coverage includes parts of CONUS & Canada, Europe, and Australia, with availability varying by crop, geography, and year. 

See Where is Monitor available? for current coverage details.

Secondary data source

Regrow's tillage geodata

Regrow combined two global gridded datasets to estimate tillage practices by crop and country.

Crop area is sourced from SPAM 2005 v3r2, which provides physical crop area for 42 crop types at ~10 km resolution

Tillage classifications are sourced from Porwollik et al. (2019), which maps six global tillage systems for the same 42 crop types at ~10 km resolution. The source tillage data includes six tillage systems, which Regrow groups into three simpler categories: no till, reduced till, and conventional till to align directly to the required inputs for emissions calculations. In general, no-till represents minimal soil disturbance, reduced till represents intermediate disturbance, and conventional till represents more intensive tillage practices.

After the datasets are matched, Regrow sums crop area within each tillage category to estimate how much of each crop is managed under no-till, reduced till, or conventional till in each country. Those totals are then converted into percentages, creating a set of default tillage shares for each crop × country combination. Areas without valid tillage classifications are excluded from the calculation.

For field-level defaulting applications, the tillage system representing the highest area x crop is selected.

Source attribution

• You, L., Wood, S., Wood-Sichra, U., & Wu, W. (2014). Generating global crop distribution maps: From census to grid. Agricultural Systems, 127, 53–60.

• Porwollik, V. et al. (2019). A global gridded data set on tillage (v1.1).