Abstract
The use of biofuels to mitigate global carbon emissions is highly dependent on direct and indirect land use changes (LUC). The direct LUC (dLUC) can be accurately evaluated using remote sensing images. In this work we evaluated the dLUC of about 4 million hectares of sugarcane expanded from 2005 to 2010 in the South-central region of Brazil. This region has a favorable climate for rain-fed sugarcane, a great potential for agriculture expansion without deforestation, and is currently responsible for almost 90% of Brazilian’s sugarcane production. An available thematic map of sugarcane along with MODIS and Landast images, acquired from 2000 to 2009, were used to evaluate the land use prior to the conversion to sugarcane. A systematic sampling procedure was adopted and the land use identification prior to sugarcane, for each sample, was performed using a web tool developed to visualize both the MODIS time series and the multitemporal Landsat images. Considering 2000 as reference year, it was observed that sugarcane expanded: 69.7% on pasture land; 25.0% on annual crops; 0.6% on forest; while 3.4% was sugarcane land under crop rotation. The results clearly show that the dLUC of recent sugarcane expansion has occurred on more than 99% of either pasture or agriculture land.
Highlights
The use of biofuels to mitigate greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and prevent the global warming potential has been widely discussed [1]
(±2.6%) was annual crop which together account for 94.7% of the direct land use change (dLUC) due to sugarcane
The dLUC from citrus to sugarcane was only observed in São Paulo State once no significant citrus plantations are found outside São Paulo within areas under the influence of sugarcane plantation
Summary
The use of biofuels to mitigate greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and prevent the global warming potential has been widely discussed [1]. The production of biofuel from sugarcane is well established in Brazil [2] and presents a great potential to mitigate GHG due to its high efficiency [3,4,5]. The growing demand of sugarcane for ethanol production, especially after 2003 with the advent of the flex cars in Brazil, has caused a rapid expansion of this crop during the last years [6]. The direct land use change (dLUC) from pasture or other agricultural crops to sugarcane can contribute to local climate cooling [9]. With regard to food security, Martinelli et al [10] discussed that the reduction of pasture land as a consequence of sugarcane expansion can be compensated by increasing the efficiency of livestock production. Mueller et al [11] concluded that the recent food price increase is not correlated to the increased demand of biofuels
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