Extending land footprints towards characterizing sustainability of land use | Umweltbundesamt

Beyond area-based land footprint indicators, additional information is needed to assess the sustainability of land use. This report discusses extensions of area-based land footprints with meaningful impact-oriented indicators for the assessment of the effects of different consumption patterns on the ecosystems and sustainability of land use. It discusses: System indicators, which considers globally very different potential land productivities, deforestation footprint, energy use in agriculture, and irrigation water use in agriculture. It introduces the methods developed for the quantification of system indicators for cropland and grassland footprints and for the deforestation footprint, and presents results for Germany and the EU.