This project focuses on the impact of land-use and land-cover change from expansion of sugarcane production and associated economic factors related to increased biofuel production in the Cerrado. The Cerrado consists of woodland savanna and is the second largest biome in Brazil. It also is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and higher demand for "clean," more sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels have led to the development of biofuel production in many parts of the world, including the Cerrado. A team of U.S.-based investigators and their Brazilian collaborators will determine how external factors, including biofuel demand and supply, sugarcane demand and supply, biofuel industry expansion, and government policy, impact farmers' decisions to produce sugarcane for biofuel production as well as other forms of land-use and land-cover change in the Cerrado. They will examine factors affecting farmers' decision making, and they will predict future land-use and land-cover change in the Cerrado under different biofuel market and policy scenarios. The investigators will collect a broad mix of qualitative and quantitative data using surveys and interviews. They will conduct archival research to provide a detailed understanding of the policy and macroeconomic context for the emergence of the sugarcane industry in the Cerrado, and they will analyze satellite-based remote sensing data to develop an data on land-use and land-cover change at the field level across the study region. They will develop a modeling framework to integrate conduct market analyses and farm-level household analyses in a comparative, longitudinal approach, with an emphasis placed on viewing sugar and ethanol processes as related to the equilibrium of supply and demand. The modeling also will provide a predictive platform to model the impacts of sugarcane production and expansion on land-cover change under different scenarios using actual field, farm, and market-level data.
This project will enhance basic understanding regarding on how market demand and supply and government policy have affected the behavior of both the ethanol industry and the farmers who are providing an increasing supply of sugarcane via land conversion in Brazil. It also will add insights and information regarding the extent to which existing agricultural cropland, pasture, and native vegetation are being converted to sugarcane. With bioenergy and its human and ecological impacts the subject of debate among policy makers and civil society in Brazil and elsewhere, project findings will have implications for conservation initiatives and sustainability. The project will contribute to graduate education and training at Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, and it will help build international partnerships between U.S.- and Brazilian-based researchers and students. The project will ensure future international collaboration on the impacts of bioenergy expansion in Brazil and create the basis for comparative work on U.S. and Brazilian energy geographies.
