Designing effective mitigation policies for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture requires understanding the mechanisms by which management practices affect emissions in different agroclimatic conditions. Agricultural GHG emissions and carbon sequestration potentials have been extensively studied in the Mediterranean biome, which is a biodiversity hot spot that is highly vulnerable to environmental changes. However, the absolute magnitude of GHG emissions and the extent to which research efforts match these emissions in each production system, are unknown. Here, we estimated GHG emissions and potential carbon sinks associated with crop and livestock production systems in the Mediterranean biome, covering 31 countries and assessing approximately 10,000 emission items. The results were then combined with a bibliometric assessment of 797 research publications to compare emissions estimates obtained with research efforts for each of the studied items. Although the magnitude of GHG emissions from crop production and the associated carbon sequestration potential (261 Tg CO₂eq yr⁻¹) were nearly half of those from livestock production (367 Tg CO₂eq yr⁻¹), mitigation research efforts were largely focused on the former. As a result, the relative research intensity, which relates the number of publications to the magnitude of emissions, is nearly one order of magnitude higher for crop production than for livestock production (2.6 and 0.4 papers Tg CO₂eq⁻¹, respectively). Moreover, this mismatch is even higher when crop and livestock types are studied separately, which indicates major research gaps associated with grassland and many strategic crop types, such as fruit tree orchards, fiber crops, roots and tubers. Most life cycle assessment studies do not consider carbon sequestration, although this single process has the highest magnitude in terms of annual CO₂eq. In addition, these studies employ Tier 1 IPCC factors, which are not suited for use in Mediterranean environments. Our analytical results show that a strategic plan is required to extend on-site field GHG measurements to the Mediterranean biome. Such a plan needs to be cocreated among stakeholders and should be based on refocusing research efforts to GHG balance components that have been afforded less attention. In addition, the outcomes of Mediterranean field studies should be integrated into life cycle assessment-based carbon footprint analyses in order to avoid misleading conclusions.

为农业温室气体 (GHG) 排放设计有效的缓解政策需要了解管理实践在不同农业气候条件下影响排放的机制。地中海生物群落是一个极易受环境变化影响的生物多样性热点，农业温室气体排放和碳封存潜力已得到广泛研究。然而，温室气体排放的绝对数量以及每个生产系统中研究工作与这些排放相匹配的程度尚不清楚。在这里，我们估算了与地中海生物群落作物和畜牧生产系统相关的温室气体排放和潜在碳汇，涵盖 31 个国家并评估了大约 10,000 个排放项目。然后将结果与 797 份研究出版物的文献计量评估相结合，以比较每个研究项目的研究工作获得的排放估计。尽管作物生产的温室气体排放量和相关的碳封存潜力（261 Tg CO₂ eq yr ^-1 ) 几乎是畜牧生产的一半 (367 Tg CO ₂ eq yr ^-1 )，缓解研究工作主要集中在前者。因此，将出版物数量与排放量联系起来的相对研究强度，作物生产比畜牧生产高近一个数量级（2.6 和 0.4 篇论文 Tg CO ₂ eq ^-1， 分别）。此外，当作物和牲畜类型分开研究时，这种不匹配甚至更高，这表明与草地和许多战略作物类型相关的主要研究空白，如果树园、纤维作物、块根和块茎。大多数生命周期评估研究不考虑碳封存，尽管这个单一过程在每年的 CO ₂方面具有最高的量级等式 此外，这些研究采用了不适合在地中海环境中使用的第 1 层 IPCC 因子。我们的分析结果表明，需要制定战略计划将现场温室气体测量扩展到地中海生物群落。这样的计划需要在利益相关者之间共同制定，并且应该基于将研究工作重新集中到温室气体平衡那些较少关注的组成部分。此外，地中海实地研究的结果应纳入基于生命周期评估的碳足迹分析，以避免误导性结论。