Assessing the efficiency of changes in land use for mitigating climate change
Abstract
Land-use changes are critical for climate policy because native vegetation and soils store abundant carbon and their losses from agricultural expansion, together with emissions from agricultural production, contribute about 20 to 25 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions 1,2 . Most climate strategies require maintaining or increasing land-based carbon 3 while meeting food demands, which are expected to grow by more than 50 per cent by 2050 1,2,4 . A finite global land area implies that fulfilling these strategies requires increasing global land-use efficiency of both storing carbon and producing food. Yet measuring the efficiency of land-use changes from the perspective of greenhouse gas emissions is challenging, particularly when land outputs change, for example, from one food to another or from food to carbon storage in forests. Intuitively, if a hectare of land produces maize well and forest poorly, maize should be the more efficient use of land, and vice versa. However, quantifying this difference and the yields at which the balance changes requires a common metric that factors in different outputs, emissions from different agricultural inputs (such as fertilizer) and the different productive potentials of land due to physical factors such as rainfall or soils. Here we propose a carbon benefits index that measures how changes in the output types, output quantities and production processes of a hectare of land contribute to the global capacity to store carbon and to reduce t…
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The approach including production emissions, soil carbon sequestration and carbon opportunity cost is more comprehensive for assessing the carbon footprint of land use than conventional land-use change approaches.
“Our finding that land-use intensity and carbon footprint are positively correlated strengthens similar findings from previous studies, none of which included production emissions, soil carbon sequestration and carbon opportunity cost, which is a more comprehensive approach for assessing the carbon footprint of land use than conventional land-use change approaches [14].”
From Carbon opportunity cost increases carbon footprint advantage of grain-finished beef (2023) · cites this paper as [14]
Previous studies on land-use intensity and carbon footprint did not include production emissions, soil carbon sequestration and carbon opportunity cost together.
“Our finding that land-use intensity and carbon footprint are positively correlated strengthens similar findings from previous studies, none of which included production emissions, soil carbon sequestration and carbon opportunity cost, which is a more comprehensive approach for assessing the carbon footprint of land use than conventional land-use change approaches [14].”
From Carbon opportunity cost increases carbon footprint advantage of grain-finished beef (2023) · cites this paper as [14]
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“Although it is unclear whether increasing the carbon efficiency of landscapes will translate to reduced system GHG emissions from the bioenergy production chain as a whole (10), continued high input costs and low commodity prices for corn grain in the United States signal opportunities for returning perennials to marg…”
Carbon opportunity cost increases carbon footprint advantage of grain-finished beef
Blaustein-Rejto, D., Soltis, N., & Blomqvist, L. (2023) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0295035 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
- Authors
- Searchinger, T. D., Wirsenius, S., Beringer, T., & Dumas, P.
- Affiliations
- World Resources Institute (US)
- Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
- Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Searchinger, Timothy D.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2018-12
- Volume
- 564
- Issue
- 7735
- Pages
- 249-253
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2904881181
- Cited by
- 617
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 73 · 2025: 102 · 2024: 97 · 2023: 74 · 2022: 81 · 2021: 102 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 36
- FWCI
- 27.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2019-01-10)
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Agritrop (Cirad) (submittedVersion)
- Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Keywords
- land use change, land use efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon storage, food production, agricultural expansion, reforestation, biofuel production, dietary change, climate policy
- MeSH terms
- Agriculture, Animals, Brazil, Conservation of Natural Resources, Diet, Fertilizers, Food Supply, Humans, Rain, Soil, Forestry, Greenhouse Effect, Crops, Agricultural, Biofuels, Global Warming, Carbon Sequestration, Carbon Footprint, Livestock, Forests
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