Indirect Land Use Impacts of Biofuels

What is Indirect Land Use Change?

A perennial pasture is plowed to plant annual biofuel feedstock crops, releasing carbon that was stored in the soil. Michael Bomford photo.

 

A surviving fragment of Amazon rainforest surrounded by cleared farmland in Brazil’s Mato Grosso province. NASA image.

Indirect land use change (iLUC) is a widely debated concept that seeks to quantify the impact a new policy or commercial activity has on global patterns of existing land use. These impacts differ …