The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Statistical confirmation of indirect land use change in the Brazilian Amazon
Open accessAbstract
Expansion of global demand for soy products and biofuel poses threats to food security and the environment. One environmental impact that has raised serious concerns is loss of Amazonian forest through indirect land use change (ILUC), whereby mechanized agriculture encroaches on existing pastures, displacing them to the frontier. This phenomenon has been hypothesized by many researchers and projected on the basis of simulation for the Amazonian forests of Brazil. It has not yet been measured statistically, owing to conceptual difficulties in linking distal land cover drivers to the point of impact. The present article overcomes this impasse with a spatial regression model capable of linking the expansion of mechanized agriculture in settled agricultural areas to pasture conversions on distant, forest frontiers. In an application for a recent period (2003–2008), the model demonstrates that ILUC is significant and of considerable magnitude. Specifically, a 10% reduction of soy in old pasture areas would have decreased deforestation by as much as 40% in heavily forested counties of the Brazilian Amazon. Evidently, the voluntary moratorium on primary forest conversions by Brazilian soy farmers has failed to stop the deforestation effects of expanding soy production. Thus, environmental policy in Brazil must pay attention to ILUC, which can complicate efforts to achieve its REDD targets.
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Cattle ranching often paves the way for industrial plantations, which then push pasturelands deeper into forest areas.
“it often paves the way for industrial plantations, which then push pasturelands deeper into forest areas (Arima et al., 2011).”
From Beyond the “supply chain” framing: Cattle ranching as a vanishing mediator of deforestation and dispossession in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon (2026) · cites this paper as Arima et al., 2011
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Cites
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“Globally oriented studies generally recognize that ILUC effects emerge at distance from the point of origin, but they stop after identifying Brazil as a point of impact for food production dynamics in the United States (Fargione et al 2008, Searchinger et al 2008).”
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Lapola, D. M., Martinelli, L. A., Peres, C. A., Ometto, J. P. H. B., Ferreira, M. E., Nobre, C. A., Aguiar, A. P. D., Bustamante, M. M. C., Cardoso, M. F., Costa, M. H., et al. (2014) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate2056 · Cited by 573
Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes
Meyfroidt, P., Carlson, K. M., Fagan, M. E., Gutiérrez-Vélez, V. H., Macedo, M. N., Curran, L. M., DeFries, R. S., Dyer, G. A., Gibbs, H. K., Lambin, E. F., et al. (2014) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/7/074012 · Cited by 240
Modelling complex systems of heterogeneous agents to better design sustainability transitions policy
Mercure, J.-F., Pollitt, H., Bassi, A. M., Viñuales, J. E., & Edwards, N. R. (2016) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.02.003 · Cited by 204
Creating space for large‐scale restoration in tropical agricultural landscapes
Latawiec, A. E., Strassburg, B. B., Brancalion, P. H., Rodrigues, R. R., & Gardner, T. (2015) · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · doi:10.1890/140052 · Cited by 195
A systematic comparison of deforestation drivers and policy effectiveness across the Amazon biome
Hänggli, A., Levy, S. A., Armenteras, D., Bovolo, C. I., Brandão, J., Rueda, X., & Garrett, R. D. (2023) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/acd408 · Cited by 73
Global bioenergy capacity as constrained by observed biospheric productivity rates
Smith, W. K., Zhao, M., & Running, S. W. (2012) · BioScience · doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.10.11 · Cited by 70
Land inequality and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
Sant'anna, A. A. (2017) · Environment and Development Economics · doi:10.1017/s1355770x1600022x · Cited by 39
Carvalho, R., Rausch, L., Gibbs, H. K., Bastos Lima, M. G., Bernasconi, P., Valdiones, A. P., Vasconcelos, A., & Silgueiro, V. (2024) · Land · doi:10.3390/land13111828 · Cited by 6
Bastos Lima, M. G., & López, J. (2026) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2026.107532
Metadata
- Authors
- Arima, E. Y., Richards, P., Walker, R., & Caldas, M. M.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Michigan State University (US)
- Kansas State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Caldas, Marcellus M
- Venue
- Environmental Research Letters
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2011-04-01
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 024010
- ISSN
- 1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2098439912
- Cited by
- 388
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 36 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 27 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 21.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Environmental Research Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX07AF16G)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Oil Palm Production and Sustainability
- Keywords
- indirect land use change, Brazilian Amazon, deforestation, soybean production, agricultural mechanization, pasture conversion, forest frontier, spatial regression, REDD+, biofuels, food security
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