Biofuel-Induced Land Use Changes: Theory, Modeling Practices, Historical Observations, and Sustainability
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2024 | Viewed by 1237
Special Issue Editors
Interests: energy; renewable energy; biofuels; agriculture; climate change; greenhouse gases
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Over the past 15 years, many papers have studied the economic and environmental impacts of biofuel production and policy. In this area of research, a large number of papers have studied the extent to which biofuel production and policy may Induce Land Use Changes (ILUC) around the world. These papers considered a wide range of topics from theory to applied modeling practices and identified those factors that may significantly affect land use changes due to biofuels and their corresponding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While from a theoretical point of view, several papers have shown that various market-mediated responses and biophysical conditions are the main factors that affect land use emissions due to biofuels, the numerical assessments of these effects vary significantly across the literature. These numerical assessments have been mainly obtained from modeling practices that follow different approaches, use diverse economic and biophysical data, and rely on various assumptions. While the validation of these estimates is a challenging task, one could develop analyses to indirectly evaluate the extent to which the estimated ILUC emissions are realistic. This could be accomplished via various testing and verification methods.
This Special Issue aims at developing these testing and verification methods. Validating technological progress in agricultural activities and changes in crop yields, observing land use changes and associated carbon implications in countries that produce biofuels and elsewhere, studying changes in crop prices and their drivers over time, examining changes in trade pattern of crops and food products, and assessing changes in the consumption of food products around the world are important verification approaches. These approaches could also capture sustainability of biofuel production. Examining the implemented data, assumptions, and approaches that were used in estimating ILUC emissions are additional items that can be used in assessing the estimated IULC values.
This Special Issue welcomes original research articles and reviews that address the above topics.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Dr. Farzad Taheripour
Dr. Steffen Mueller
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- biofuel
- biofuel policy
- land use
- land use emissions
- model validation
- crop yields
- trade
- crop trade
- sustainability
