The global potential for mitigating nitrous oxide emissions from croplands

Agricultural activities contribute almost half of the total anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) 2 O) emissions, but proper assessment of mitigation measures is hampered by large uncertainties during the quantification of cropland N2O 2 O emissions and mitigation potentials. This review summarizes the up-to-date datasets and approaches to provide spatially explicit and crop-specific assessment of the global mitigation potentials. Here, we show that global cropland N2O 2 O emissions have quadrupled to 1.2 Tg N2O-N 2 O-N year- 1 over 1961-2020. The mitigation potential is 0.7 Tg N2O-N 2 O-N without compromising the crop production, with 86% from optimizing nitrogen fertilization, three-quarters (78%) from maize (22%), vegetables, and fruits (16%), other crops (15%), wheat (13%), and rice (12%), and over 80% from South Asia, China, the European Union, other American countries, the United States, and Southeast Asia. More accurate estimation of cropland N2O 2 O mitigation potentials requires extending the N2O 2 O observation network, improving modeling capacity, quantifying the feasibility of mitigation measures, and seeking additional mitigation measures.