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Landscape change s driven by anthropogenic activities often have negative impacts on ecosystems, jeopardizing the provision of vital services that sustain biotic elements and wildlife. Predicting the effects of such transformations is crucial for developing strategies to mitigate ecological damage. This study explores the interaction of land use changes and habitat quality estimates in the Upper Paraguay River Basin in Brazil, using the InVEST Habitat Quality model to estimate spatiotemporal landscape trends and evaluate the potential impact of land use policies for the future. Under a business-as-usual scenario by 2050, potential land use changes are simulated for shaping habitat quality, habitat degradation, and habitat rarity estimates as landscape proxies for biodiversity conservation. Results show an extensive expansion of pastures through deforestation, leading to progressive habitat degradation with a significant decay in the predicted and observed habitat quality. The habitat quality index estimates show a spatial decrease from 0.78 to 0.57 for the 1989–2050 period. The same trend is observed in protected areas for the period 2019–2050, with an increase of anthropogenic land use and a decrease of the habitat quality from 0.80 to 0.57 in conservation units, and from 0.75 to 0.53 in indigenous lands. For improved conservation outcomes, this work introduces new insights for shaping environmental actions that can be flagged as sustainable land management practices and ecological perspectives towards spatial pressures at different scales. Therefore, government institutions responsible for the protection of conservation units and indigenous communities can be informed about potential land use impacts on their territories. The findings suggest that incorporating additional scenario trends and climate-related variables could be a valuable direction for future studies to extend further the modelling approaches explored in this work. • Landscape changes threaten biodiversity in Brazil's Upper Paraguay River Basin. • Habitat quality is projected to sharply decline by 2050. • Protected areas are predicted to lose 20% of natural land cover under a BAU scenario. • Conservation units and indigenous lands face high-risk from anthropogenic pressures. • A shift to sustainable and innovative agro-pastoral practices is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its low global share of direct energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (1–2%), the implications of technological transitions in the agricultural and forestry sector on the energy system have been overlooked. This paper introduces the Agriculture and Land Use Sector module part of the ModUlar energy System Environment (MUSE), a novel energy system simulation model. The study presents a generalisable method that enables energy modellers to characterise agricultural technologies within an energy system modelling framework. Different mechanisation processes were characterised to simulate intensification/extensification transitions in the sector and its wider implications in the energy and land use system aiming at providing reliable non-energy outputs similarly to those found in dedicated land use models. Additionally, a forest growth model has been integrated to explore the role of reforestation alongside decarbonisation measures in the energy system in achieving carbon mitigation pathways. To illustrate the model's capabilities, Brazil is used as case study. Outputs suggest that by 2030 under a 2 °C mitigation scenario, most of Brazil agricultural production would move from 'transitional' to 'modern' practices, improving productivity and reducing deforestation rates, at the expense of higher energy and fertiliser demand. By mid-century Brazil has the potential to liberate around 24.4 Mha of agricultural land, where large-scale reforestation could have the capacity to sequester around 5.6 GtCO 2 , alleviating mitigation efforts in the energy system, especially reducing carbon capture and storage technology investments in the industry and power sector. • A novel energy-oriented agriculture and land use systems model has been developed. • Mechanisation levels are characterised using cluster analysis and linear optimisation. • Role of reforestation alongside measures in the energy sector in Brazil are studied. • By 2050, modern mechanisation could represent 54–63% of agricultural production. • Brazil has the potential to sequester around 5.6 GtCO 2 through reforestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future projections indicate an expansion for both food and energy demands, which can increase pressure on land use, while there is an urgent global need for climate change mitigation. Bioenergy is foreseen as key option to meet future energy demands and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, however its sustainability depends on locations and regional characteristics. Simultaneously, agricultural production models that co-produce food, feed, and energy offer sustainability synergies and co-benefits, but site-specific sustainability assessments of their large-scale implementation are missing. This study presents a bottom-up approach to assess spatially explicit sustainability aspects of bioenergy-livestock integrated systems (BLI) in Brazil and shed light on their contribution to future energy demands, to climate change mitigation targets, and their impacts on selected ecosystem services, including bioenergy production, climate change mitigation, reduction of food competition, biodiversity conservation, and avoided deforestation. The proposed integration considers livestock intensification and use of biofuels by-products as animal feed supplement, taking advantage of synergies between these two value chains. The expansion of the BLI system in the Center-South region of Brazil produce up to 89 billion liters of ethanol, enough to meet future domestic ethanol demands from multiple shared socioeconomic pathways and generating surpluses for export. This production takes place on 16 million hectares of pastureland within the Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning, excluding the Amazon and Pantanal biomes, and biodiversity hotspots. BLI expansion mitigate up to 250 million tonnes of CO 2 eq and generate 15 billion dollars of profits. The best locations to maximize the selected ecosystem services are west of São Paulo, east of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the south-central region of the states of Goiás. This study may encourage the formulation of enhanced public policies for the integration of bioenergy and livestock value chains and guide a sustainable large-scale deployment of BLI systems. • Bioenergy and livestock integration (BLI): co-production of food, feed and energy. • BLI systems: 89 billion liters of ethanol and 250 million tonnes of CO 2 eq mitigated. • Enough ethanol to meet future Brazilian demands and surplus to be exported. • Biomass expansion only on pastureland inside Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning. • Without land displacement and deforestation of native vegetation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International trade of soybeans has increased substantially over recent decades. Its environmental toll is routinely linked to deforestation and biodiversity loss. However, soybean trade also imposes a huge demand on water and land resources, in individual countries and globally. Such a burden, and its underlying sectoral drivers, is frequently overlooked within the current research and policy agenda around sustainable soybean supply chains. This study evaluates the Virtual Water Trade (VWT) and Virtual Land Trade (VLT) of global soybean trade and reveals which countries and sectors are responsible. Soybean-related VWT and VLT are estimated by combining physical import and export data and associated resource use information from 166 countries during the period 2000–2016. Over this period global virtual soybean-related virtual water and land trade grew by 298% and 250% respectively. In 2016, 812 Gm3 of water use and 41 Mha of land use was directly embodied in international soybean trade. This corresponds to one-third of water and land used to grow soybean globally. Soybean-related VWT and VLT was mainly driven by demand in China, the Netherlands and Mexico, for soybean grown in the US, Brazil and Argentina. Animal feed is responsible for around three-quarters of this resource use. A reduction in the consumption of animal products or switching to direct human consumption of soybeans would reduce the overall demand for soybean production and associated resource use. Although welcome, calls for deforestation-free soybean supply chains do not go far enough to reduce the large, global water and land demand of soybean trade. The research and policy agenda around soybean trade warrants a broader focus on water and land use and whether this represents an efficient, and logical, allocation of resources within the context of food provision and national resource security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000, soybean production has gained increasing importance in Brazil, particularly in Southern Amazonia and the state of Mato Grosso, the largest producer in the country. This expansion has taken place through cropland extensification into natural ecosystems in the Amazon (tropical forest) and Cerrado (savanna) biomes with land transformation and occupation activity well documented by remote sensing. Guidelines from the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative now allow for impact assessment of land transformation and occupation within a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to estimate potential impacts to biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this study, we apply these guidelines to soybean produced in 2010 in order to complement more traditional soybean LCAs with mid- and end-point impact assessment on biodiversity, erosion potential, water purification, groundwater recharge, biotic production and climate regulation potential in each of the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. In addition to providing regionalized characterization factors of land transformation and occupation in both Mato Grosso biomes, we estimate that one tonne of soybean produced in 2010 in the Amazon had greater impacts than when produced in the Cerrado. For the Amazon, total land transformation and occupation damage was estimated at $ 532 ton −1 and $ 260 ton −1 respectively, with estimates of $ 231 ton −1 and $ 153 ton −1 for the Cerrado. The largest contributors to these damage estimates came from the change in mechanical filtration properties of the soil followed by the land's climate regulation and biotic production potentials. The impact allocation to pasture as a transitional landscape in the establishment of cropland onto natural ecosystems diminished the soybean contribution through allocation of pasture to the beef production system, further adding to the land sparing argument for future cropland expansion in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use and climate change are expected to significantly alter hydrology and consequently electricity production in countries extremely dependent on their water resources, such as Brazil. Therefore, we used the large-scale hydrological model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), which we integrated with climate change and land use scenarios for the Tocantins-Araguaia Watershed (TAW) with a focus on energy production at the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant (THP) in the southeastern Amazon. We used daily precipitation and temperature data from two General Circulation Models (GCM), HadGEM2-ES and MIROC5 with moderate (+4.5 W/m2 in the year 2100 relative to pre-industrial levels) and severe (+8.5 W/m2) radiative forcing from carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere (Representative Concentration Pathways). For the land use and land cover change (LULCC) scenario, we replaced forest areas only with pasture, then with agriculture, then with reforestation vegetation, and finally with regenerated forest. Each LULCC period was coupled with the highest impact climate scenario found for TAW (MIROC5-RCP 8.5); thus, we investigated five scenarios and their impacts on hydropower production and revenue in THP. Our results highlight that the TAW will face a large water reduction by the end of the century, which in all scenarios will strongly impact the basin's energy production and hydro revenue. Reductions of up to 74% in annual flow and 63% in electricity generation are expected for the most pessimistic scenario (L8.5), triggering a 135% deficit per year in THP revenue. Although some land use change scenarios partially minimize the climate-driven flow decrease trend in the period of higher precipitation, there is still a dramatic reduction in flow during the dry season, thus exacerbating seasonal and inter-annual variability. [Display omitted] • 74% reductions are expected for regional flow under LULC and Climate Change. • A flow deficit of up to 98% for the winter is expected in the worst-case climate scenario. • A reduction in energy production greater than 60% is expected for all scenarios. • A revenue loss of 135% was found for the coupled climate change and LULC scenario. • In the long-term climate change may have a greater impact than regional LULC on hydropower energy and revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that sustainability of Brazilian ethanol is intrinsically associated with the effects of sugarcane expansion on land use changes, this paper aims to assess sugarcane land use using data such as sugarcane yield, water requirements, land expansion and production costs under rainfed and irrigated management. The Paranaíba basin was selected as a case study because of recent large scale expansion of sugarcane. Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) methodology was used to identify sugarcane dynamics during four crop seasons. Crop water requirements, through the water footprint methodology, cane yield, and production costs were estimated by combining the Agroecological Zone Model and CanaSoft. Results show that most sugarcane was spatially distributed in the central area of the basin, with less potential for yield gain through irrigation. This region has significant water availability issues. A 54% increase in sugarcane area (617,000–947,000 ha) was identified, mostly from the central region to the west, and to a lesser extent to the southeast. Both expansion areas represent improved edaphoclimatic (soil and climatic) conditions, hence, higher yields, lower water footprint, and lower production costs under rainfed and irrigated managements. Furthermore, there are less subbasins with water quantity problems and almost none with water quality or both quantity and quality concerns, which suggests greater possibilities for accessing water for irrigation; however, there is an environmental cost associated with this practice on average, 13 m 3 Mg −1 (Mega gram, 10 6 g) of blue water footprint. In the context of this highly water-intensive crop, sugarcane expansion in the Paranaíba basin in areas of improved soil and climatic conditions enhances the sustainability of ethanol production in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cumulative impact assessment (CIA) is particularly challenging when several projects from different proponents are presented simultaneously for a region. The impacts of such projects are typically assessed individually, but approaches and methods commonly applied to single-project impact assessment may not be adequate to such problems. The pressure–state–response (PSR) model was adapted to tackle cumulative impacts of ten projects concentrated in an iron ore mining region in Southeastern Brazil. Using information from individual assessments, a set of indicators was built to depict current and future pressures on valued environmental and social components, to describe the current and to derive trends for the future state of the environment, and to review mitigation responses. It was found that the future state will likely be critical for both air and water quality, possibly stable for natural vegetation, due to the likely combined result of rehabilitation and offsets, and for both cultural heritage and public roads, due to likely effect of mitigation. Relying on individual assessments proved to be unsatisfactory, because key information on both the characteristics of the projects and baseline are largely inconsistent across studies and presented in very different formats. An indicator-based PSR approach to CIA is information-intense and is recommended only when databases are reliable and built on the basis of standard protocols. The need to better understand cumulative impacts and to provide corresponding, landscape or watershed scale, mitigation and management responses could be a driver for a more widespread and consistent use of standardized indicators in individual impact assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of offset paper production in Brazil. The production system is classified into two subsystems: a forest production subsystem, which involves seedling production, soil preparation, seedling planting, forest maintenance, and wood harvesting and transport processes; and an industrial production subsystem, involving wood pulp extraction and bleaching, chemical recovery, and offset paper manufacturing processes. The environmental analysis includes the primary energy demand, environmental impact assessment, and land use indicators. The primary energy demand indicated that the largest amount of both renewable and non-renewable primary energy is consumed by the industrial production subsystem, accounting for 91.0% of the total energy demand. The potential environmental impact assessment included eight impact categories: acidification, ecotoxicity, global warming, human toxicity – cancer effects, human toxicity – non-cancer effects, nutrient enrichment, ozone depletion, and photochemical oxidation. Most of the potential impacts are attributed to the processes of pulp extraction and bleaching, and offset paper manufacturing, mainly due to the production of electricity and thermal energy. As for impacts on land use during the forest activities, a recent developed approach was applied for the regionalized assessment of impacts. Land occupation impacts on erosion resistance, physicochemical filtration, and mechanical filtration showed a reduction in the soil ecological functions, whereas groundwater recharge indicated a credit for the performance of the soil function. With a view to reducing the main life cycle impacts of the industrial production subsystem, an evaluation is made of alternative production scenarios. The best scenario was the substitution of biomass and diesel in the energy generation unit by biomass gasification and optimization of the recovery boiler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofuels are predicted to constitute a large proportion of fuel consumption in the global transport sector under stringent climate mitigation polices in future. In Brazil, sugarcane ethanol has been widely deployed at large scale and an oriented expansion of sugarcane is considered to be a key measure to ensure the expected positive outcomes from biofuels. In this study, more recent and accurate georeferenced information were combined with an enhanced land use classification system to update the original Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning (SAEZ). We also excluded environmentally relevant areas (ERA) in our updated SAEZ to create a new set of reference maps for supporting future prioritization of areas for sugarcane ethanol expansion. We mapped 41.7 Mha as suitable land for sugarcane expansion in center-south region of Brazil, differently from the 50 Mha indicated in the original SAEZ. After excluding the ERA, 33.7 Mha was found to be suitable for sugarcane expansion, of which 20 Mha is currently occupied with pasture lands. About half of these areas were located in Mato Grosso do Sul and Minas Gerais states and an exploratory assessment of two microregions from these states demonstrated the importance of conducting regional assessments to prioritize the areas for a more sustainable sugarcane expansion to meet future bioenergy demands. • Our analysis identified an area 17% smaller than original agro-ecological zoning suitable for sugarcane expansion. • By excluding environmentally relevant areas, the total suitable area for sugarcane expansion is reduced to 33.7 Mha. • About two thirds of that area is currently occupied with pasture lands. • About half of suitable areas occupied with pasture lands are in two Brazilian states. • Local conditions are fundamental for oriented expansion of bioenergy production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]