In the frame of the GHG-Europe project work package 2 a particular task is dedicated to land-use change effects on the greenhouse gas balance and soil carbon. This task is coordinated at the vTI Institute of Agricultural Climate Research and performed in cooperation with partners at the University Copenhagen, Agroscope Zurich, University College Dublin, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Midlothian UK and University Leuven, Belgium and additional cooperation partners at the experimental sites.

Around 30 sites with different land-use changes are sampled in a pan-European sampling campaign using a standardised sampling protocols. All samples are analysed at the Institute of Agricultural Climate Research. A focus of this research is on land-use effects on subsoil carbon which is an important but mostly ignored soil carbon pool. Moreover, the effect of land-use changes to bioenergy crops on the greenhouse gas balance is assessed.