Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use

Significance Land use and land cover change has resulted in substantial losses of carbon from soils globally, but credible estimates of how much soil carbon has been lost have been difficult to generate. Using a data-driven statistical model and the History Database of the Global Environment v3.2 historic land-use dataset, we estimated that agricultural land uses have resulted in the loss of 133 Pg C from the soil. Importantly, our maps indicate hotspots of soil carbon loss, often associated with major cropping regions and degraded grazing lands, suggesting that there are identifiable regions that should be targets for soil carbon restoration efforts.