Countries with more maize crop residue burning tend to have higher indirect N2O emissions.
Comparing Emission Totals - Indirect emissions (N2O) - Crop Residues with Maize (corn) — Burning crop residues (Emissions N2O) across 141 countries, 1980–2050.
- Rank correlation
- +0.83
- Holding size constant
- +0.57
- Countries compared
- 141
- Period
- 1980–2050
What might link these
Maize crop residue burning directly contributes to N2O emissions, so a strong link is expected. However, the partial correlation drops after controlling for population and GDP, suggesting economic development or agricultural scale may influence both variables.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. The high rank correlation could partly reflect that larger or more agricultural countries report both metrics more prominently.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.