A description of the sources and regions used in EDGAR 3 is provided in the Definitions section of the documentation. The first letter identifies the main source categories:

B - Biofuel, combustion and production
F - Fossil fuel, combustion, production, and handling/transmission
I  - Industrial processes (i.e. non-combustion), including solvent use.
L - Agriculture and Landuse
W - Waste handling

For a more accurate description and definition the EDGAR source categories have been related to the IPCC source categories 1 to 6 that have been defined for reporting of national greenhouse gas inventories under the Climate Convention. The definitions of the latter have been included in the documentation.
Please note that the regions in EDGAR 3 have been reordered; now the OECD, Economies-In-Transition (EIT) and Less Developed Countries (LDC) regions are grouped together, respectively. (These three regional clusters are somewhat homogeneous with respect to the development of the national statistical systems and the emission factors for a number of source categories.)

We appreciate that you use EDGAR data as reference data set for your scientific, policy or other applications. EDGAR data as provided on the web site and through anonymous FTP may be freely used, provided that you acknowledge the estimated uncertainties as summarised in the uncertainty tables in the Uncertainty section of the documentation, and that you include your publication the following reference to the EDGAR data: 

source: EDGAR 3.x by RIVM/TNO (Olivier, J.G.J. and Berdowski, J.J.M., 2001, Global emission sources and sinks. In: J. Berdowski, R. Guicherit and B.J. Heij (eds.), The Climate System: 33-77. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers). 

For EDGAR V2.0 the proper citation is: 

EDGAR V2.0 by RIVM/TNO (Olivier, J.G.J., Bouwman, A.F., Berdowski, J.J.M., Veldt, C., Bloos, J.P.J., Visschedijk, A.J.H., Van der Maas, C.W.M. and P.Y.J. Zandveld, 1999, Sectoral emission inventories of greenhouse gases for 1990 on a per country basis as well as on 1o x 1o. Environmental Science & Policy, 2, 241-264).

In addition, as a small service in return to our efforts to compile, document, release and update these datasets, we greatly appreciate it, if you send us by snail mail, fax or email a copy of your publication in which you refer to EDGAR data. This is also appreciated for older publications, which refer to EDGAR 2 data. 

Our mailing address is:
RIVM 
EDGAR team
c/o Jeroen Peters
P.O. Box 1
NL-3720 BA  Bilthoven
The Netherlands
Email: mailto:edgar-info@mnp.nl

At the web site we provide per compound a GIF-file with a graph of gridded total anthropogenic emissions for a specific year. You may use this in publications, provided that you include a reference to the EDGAR data as described above. 
If you would require a higher resolution picture, please contact us, since all grid maps are converted from originals in EPS format.

At present, there are several gridded population map around, like the 1ox1o maps from Harvard/Logan, NASA-GISS, two maps at 10'x10' NGCIA, and the GEIA map on 1ox1o by Li. We use the Li map since it is the only map available at 1x1 which has the following qualifications:

• a uniform spatial quality for all countries - in contrast with the NGCIA maps, which are based on sub-national census data that have in many cases a very high spatial resolution, but also include several countries - e.g. the Russian Federation - of which the smallest units are much larger then a 1ox1o grid cell;
• a detailed rural population distribution due to the inclusion of small towns to the  size of 10,000 inhabitants and compiled for a recent year - in contrast with the NASA-GISS and Harvard/Logan maps, which were compiled for an older year and using less details for the rural area;
• it locates population in the proper grid cell - whereas allows taking account of border cells, which include areas of more than one country/sea area.  

For these reasons this map was selected as the default GEIA population map for new inventories. Moreover, due to the more detailed spatial resolution in the rural areas, the Li map is better suited for splitting into urban and rural sub-maps.

At global level agricultural waste burning emissions are very uncertain by their nature. Uncertainty comes into the equation e.g. when estimating (a) the fraction of above-ground crop residues per unit of net crop production (by crop type); (b) the fraction of above-ground residue left on the field (by crop type) (i.e. not removed e.g. with the crop or for use as biofuel); (d) the carbon and nitrogen content in the crop residues (when emission factors are expressed relative to CO2 and to the N content). In the literature very different fractions of crop residues burned are used. The recent estimates we used are lower than the older ones. Moreover, in our analysis the crop residues used for energetic purposes (i.e. as 'vegetal biofuel') are subtracted from the amounts allocated to our source category 'Agricultural waste burning'.

We anticipate to expand the EDGAR 3.2 datasets with Black Carbon (BC) and Organic Carbon (OC) emissions. However, there will be a rather large uncertainty involved, due to the limited number of measurements and limited knowledge about the degree of diversity within the sources.
In addition, we are considering to expand the TNO results for Europe to a global anthropogenic inventory of PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 emissions.

Yes, in the second half of 2005 we will provide information on Black Carbon (BC) and Organic Carbon (OC) emissions cf. Bond et al. (2003) in the EDGAR information system. For other information please check out other websites, e.g. of GEIA/IGBP. The GEIA group that is compiling a set for all primary particles has not yet finished. Also, for Europe TNO has compiled a regional emissions database for PM10 and PM2.5, which is available online. See the TNO website or the CEPMEIP website.