Carbon debt

The one-off pulse of carbon released when land is cleared or converted for a fuel crop, from burned or decaying vegetation and disturbed soil. The fuel must then save emissions for years before it has repaid that debt. Converting Southeast Asian peat rainforest to palm releases about 3,452 t CO₂ per hectare, by one widely cited estimate.

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Related terms

Land use, soil and agriculture

• Amortization period
• Carbon-debt payback time
• Cerrado
• Cover crop
• Direct land-use change
• Double-cropping and relay-cropping
• Enhanced-efficiency nitrogen fertilizer
• Foregone sequestration
• Indirect land-use change
• Intermediate oilseed
• Land-use change
• Main-season crop
• Marginal land
• Mineral soil
• Nitrogen fixation
• Peat
• Peat oxidation
• Soil carbon
• Soil N₂O (direct and indirect)
• Soil-carbon credit
• Vegetable-oil substitution
• Yield-price elasticity