Estimating greenhouse gas emissions from direct land use change due to crop production in multiple countries

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from direct land use change (LUC) in GHG footprint studies of crops are often estimated using national land use change statistics, as in many cases the exact location of crop cultivation and land use history is unknown. As such, these studies neglect spatial variability in land use change (amount and configuration) at the sub-national level as well as spatial variability in natural carbon stocks. For this reason, a spatial approach that enables consistent implementation of LUC emissions of crop production at different locations is developed and applied in this study. The dataset of crop production covers 69 crops cultivated on 1885 farms in 33 countries, spanning North and South America, Asia, Australia and Oceania, Europe and Africa, in the year 2014. Of the 1885 farms, 33% (619 farms) were identified to have LUC emissions when estimated at the local scale. LUC emissions of farms, derived using local scale location information, were found to have little correlation with those estimated at coarser spatial scales (such as the province or country level) using the spatial approach in this study or estimated using accounting approaches based on national statistics. Analysis at coarser spatial scales typically overestimated the LUC emissions of crops, as LUC in other regions can heavily influence these estimates. Therefore, it is concluded that local scale LUC emissions better represent local LUC dynamics, thereby improving the reliability of GHG footprint studies.