Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 30 / Sustainable Agriculture Reviews Bd.30 (PDF)

The originality of this book is to review and characterize the current body of scientific publications that describe the complete causal sequence from reorganization of agricultural production to land use changes (LUC) and the resulting environmental impacts.

Concerns have been raised recently about the consequences of LUC linked to the expansion of primary production for bioenergy, notably in terms of the greenhouse gas impacts. Such concerns have prompted a sharp increase in the number of scientific publications on this topic over the past ten years. However, scientific research on LUC tends to be highly segmented between that focused on LUC drivers and the body of work examining LUC impacts.

In fact, in order to account for LUC impacts /within /when assessing the environmental footprint of biomass production, we need to be able to link reorganization in biomass production to changes in the use and management of soils, and then determine the impacts of those LUC onthe environment. Surprisingly, no systematic literature review encompassing this full causal sequence, "drivers - LUC - environmental impacts" have been carried out so far.

The present book chapters examines both the range of territorial reorganizations leading to LUC and the range of associated environmental impacts considered in the literature, including GHG emissions, atmospheric pollution, biodiversity impacts, water resources, and soil quality.