Land, carbon and biodiversity data for supply chain impact calculations

Abstract

Monitoring, halting and reversing land conversion is fundamental to meeting international biodiversity and climate targets, and agriculture is the major driver of land conversion. We present an open access set of global data for calculating land use change impacts of agricultural supply chains. These data, originally prepared for the LandGriffon service, include indicators of deforestation, conversion of natural ecosystems, greenhouse gas emissions, and loss of intact or high integrity ecosystems following international standards and guidelines for reporting and target setting in the agriculture, forestry, and land use sector. In order to assign impacts to agricultural production, we prepare data using a spatial adaptation of the statistical Land Use Change (sLUC) accounting approach distributing impact to human activities across the local area using a 50km radius. The results are high resolution global maps of impact per hectare of land occupation. These can then be combined with land footprint data, cropland extent, or productivity maps to calculate land use change related impacts for specific crop volumes sourced from specific regions. Carbon and deforestation results are validated against FAO statistics at the national level.