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The ongoing globalization process strengthens the connections between different geographic regions through trade. Biomass products, such as food, fiber, or bioenergy, are increasingly traded globally, thereby leading to telecouplings between distant, seemingly unrelated regions. For example, restrictions for agricultural production or changes in bioenergy demand in Europe or the United States might contribute to deforestation in Latin America or Sub‐Saharan Africa. One approach to analyze trade‐related land‐use effects of the global socioeconomic biomass metabolism is the "embodied human appropriation of net primary production" or eHANPP. eHANPP accounts allocate to any product the entire amount of the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) that emerges throughout its supply chain. This allows consumption‐based accounts to move beyond simple area‐demand approaches by taking differences in natural productivity as well as in land‐use intensity into account, both across land‐use types as well as across world regions. In this article, we discuss the eHANPP related to the European Union's (EU) consumption of biomass products in the period 1986–2007, based on a consistent global trade data set derived from bilateral data. We find a considerable dependency of the EU on the appropriation of biological productivity outside its own boundaries, with increasing reliance on Latin America as a main supplier. By using the EU as an illustrative example, we demonstrate the usefulness of eHANPP for assessing land‐use impacts caused by nations' socioeconomic activities and conclude that the eHANPP approach can provide useful information to better manage ecosystems globally in the face of an increasingly interconnected world.

The future bioenergy crop potential depends on (1) changes in the food system (food demand, agricultural technology), (2) political stability and investment security, (3) biodiversity conservation, (4) avoidance of long carbon payback times from deforestation, and (5) energy crop yields. Using a biophysical biomass-balance model, we analyze how these factors affect global primary bioenergy potentials in 2050. The model calculates biomass supply and demand balances for eleven world regions, eleven food categories, seven food crop types and two livestock categories, integrating agricultural forecasts and scenarios with a consistent global land use and NPP database. The TREND scenario results in a global primary bioenergy potential of 77 EJ/yr, alternative assumptions on food-system changes result in a range of 26–141 EJ/yr. Exclusion of areas for biodiversity conservation and inaccessible land in failed states reduces the bioenergy potential by up to 45%. Optimistic assumptions on future energy crop yields increase the potential by up to 48%, while pessimistic assumptions lower the potential by 26%. We conclude that the design of sustainable bioenergy crop production policies needs to resolve difficult trade-offs such as food vs. energy supply, renewable energy vs. biodiversity conservation or yield growth vs. reduction of environmental problems of intensive agriculture.

International audience ; The intensification of European land use accelerated substantially in a few decades, particularly in agro-ecosystems that are facing an increasing demand for agricultural products and whose area is also constrained by other uses (e.g. urbanization). Increases in land use intensity (LUI) are characterized by increases of the agricultural outputs per land unit through management practices and/or by increasing amounts of inputs. LUI is a complex and multi-dimensional issue in which each dimension needs to be considered to have a better understanding of the impact of LUI on ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. Here, we focused on five existing LUI indicators: the Input Cost per hectare (IC/ha), assessing the expenses in inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), the High Nature Value (HNV), a scoring system of agricultural areas accounting for the presence of landscape elements and practices favorable to biodiversity, and three indices of the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) framework, i.e. the harvested biomass (HANPPharv), the living biomass flow remaining available after harvests (NPPeco) and HANPP which combines harvested biomass and effects of land use conversion. First, we discussed how these indicators can relate to the dimensions of LUI. Then, we tested whether HANPP, HANPPharv and NPPeco were redundant with IC/ha and HNV throughout 25,758 French metropolitan municipalities, using Pearson's correlation coefficient and Linear Mixed-effects Models, while accounting for climatic and landscape parameters. As expected, HANPP, NPPeco and HANPPharv were highly correlated with each other, but weakly to HNV and IC/ha. HNV showed a positive relationship with NPPeco but negative with HANPP and HANPPharv. The opposite findings were observed with IC/ha. These three indicators seem complementary to HNV and IC/ha indicators, linking farmland structural properties and inputs intensity. Finally, we showed how these indicators can be linked, i.e. particular combinations of the ...

International audience ; The intensification of European land use accelerated substantially in a few decades, particularly in agro-ecosystems that are facing an increasing demand for agricultural products and whose area is also constrained by other uses (e.g. urbanization). Increases in land use intensity (LUI) are characterized by increases of the agricultural outputs per land unit through management practices and/or by increasing amounts of inputs. LUI is a complex and multi-dimensional issue in which each dimension needs to be considered to have a better understanding of the impact of LUI on ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. Here, we focused on five existing LUI indicators: the Input Cost per hectare (IC/ha), assessing the expenses in inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), the High Nature Value (HNV), a scoring system of agricultural areas accounting for the presence of landscape elements and practices favorable to biodiversity, and three indices of the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) framework, i.e. the harvested biomass (HANPPharv), the living biomass flow remaining available after harvests (NPPeco) and HANPP which combines harvested biomass and effects of land use conversion. First, we discussed how these indicators can relate to the dimensions of LUI. Then, we tested whether HANPP, HANPPharv and NPPeco were redundant with IC/ha and HNV throughout 25,758 French metropolitan municipalities, using Pearson's correlation coefficient and Linear Mixed-effects Models, while accounting for climatic and landscape parameters. As expected, HANPP, NPPeco and HANPPharv were highly correlated with each other, but weakly to HNV and IC/ha. HNV showed a positive relationship with NPPeco but negative with HANPP and HANPPharv. The opposite findings were observed with IC/ha. These three indicators seem complementary to HNV and IC/ha indicators, linking farmland structural properties and inputs intensity. Finally, we showed how these indicators can be linked, i.e. particular combinations of the ...

International audience ; The intensification of European land use accelerated substantially in a few decades, particularly in agro-ecosystems that are facing an increasing demand for agricultural products and whose area is also constrained by other uses (e.g. urbanization). Increases in land use intensity (LUI) are characterized by increases of the agricultural outputs per land unit through management practices and/or by increasing amounts of inputs. LUI is a complex and multi-dimensional issue in which each dimension needs to be considered to have a better understanding of the impact of LUI on ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. Here, we focused on five existing LUI indicators: the Input Cost per hectare (IC/ha), assessing the expenses in inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), the High Nature Value (HNV), a scoring system of agricultural areas accounting for the presence of landscape elements and practices favorable to biodiversity, and three indices of the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) framework, i.e. the harvested biomass (HANPPharv), the living biomass flow remaining available after harvests (NPPeco) and HANPP which combines harvested biomass and effects of land use conversion. First, we discussed how these indicators can relate to the dimensions of LUI. Then, we tested whether HANPP, HANPPharv and NPPeco were redundant with IC/ha and HNV throughout 25,758 French metropolitan municipalities, using Pearson's correlation coefficient and Linear Mixed-effects Models, while accounting for climatic and landscape parameters. As expected, HANPP, NPPeco and HANPPharv were highly correlated with each other, but weakly to HNV and IC/ha. HNV showed a positive relationship with NPPeco but negative with HANPP and HANPPharv. The opposite findings were observed with IC/ha. These three indicators seem complementary to HNV and IC/ha indicators, linking farmland structural properties and inputs intensity. Finally, we showed how these indicators can be linked, i.e. particular combinations of the ...

International audience ; The intensification of European land use accelerated substantially in a few decades, particularly in agro-ecosystems that are facing an increasing demand for agricultural products and whose area is also constrained by other uses (e.g. urbanization). Increases in land use intensity (LUI) are characterized by increases of the agricultural outputs per land unit through management practices and/or by increasing amounts of inputs. LUI is a complex and multi-dimensional issue in which each dimension needs to be considered to have a better understanding of the impact of LUI on ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. Here, we focused on five existing LUI indicators: the Input Cost per hectare (IC/ha), assessing the expenses in inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), the High Nature Value (HNV), a scoring system of agricultural areas accounting for the presence of landscape elements and practices favorable to biodiversity, and three indices of the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) framework, i.e. the harvested biomass (HANPPharv), the living biomass flow remaining available after harvests (NPPeco) and HANPP which combines harvested biomass and effects of land use conversion. First, we discussed how these indicators can relate to the dimensions of LUI. Then, we tested whether HANPP, HANPPharv and NPPeco were redundant with IC/ha and HNV throughout 25,758 French metropolitan municipalities, using Pearson's correlation coefficient and Linear Mixed-effects Models, while accounting for climatic and landscape parameters. As expected, HANPP, NPPeco and HANPPharv were highly correlated with each other, but weakly to HNV and IC/ha. HNV showed a positive relationship with NPPeco but negative with HANPP and HANPPharv. The opposite findings were observed with IC/ha. These three indicators seem complementary to HNV and IC/ha indicators, linking farmland structural properties and inputs intensity. Finally, we showed how these indicators can be linked, i.e. particular combinations of the ...

Long-term studies of land system change can help providing insights into the relative importance of underlying drivers of change. Here, we analyze land system change in Germany for the period 1883–2007 to trace the effect of drastic socio-economic and institutional changes on land system dynamics. Germany is an especially interesting case study due to fundamentally changing economic and institutional conditions: the two World Wars, the separation into East and West Germany, the accession to the European Union, and Germany's reunification. We employed the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) framework to comprehensively study long-term land system dynamics in the context of these events. HANPP quantifies biomass harvests and land-use-related changes in ecosystem productivity. By comparing these flows to the potential productivity of ecosystems, HANPP allows to consistently assess land cover changes as well as changes in land use intensity. Our results show that biomass harvest steadily increased while productivity losses declined from 1883 to 2007, leading to a decline in HANPP from around 75%–65% of the potential productivity. At the same time, decreasing agricultural areas allowed for forest regrowth. Overall, land system change in Germany was surprisingly gradual, indicating high resilience to the drastic socio-economic and institutional shifts that occurred during the last 125 years. We found strikingly similar land system trajectories in East and West Germany during the time of separation (1945–1989), despite the contrasting institutional settings and economic paradigms. Conversely, the German reunification sparked a fundamental and rapid shift in former East Germany's land system, leading to altered levels of production, land use intensity and land use efficiency. Gradual and continuous land use intensification, a result of industrialization and economic optimization of land use, was the dominant trend throughout the observed period, apparently overruling socio-economic framework conditions and land use policies.