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Massive soybean expansion in South America since 2000 and implications for conservation

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 784–792 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

A prominent goal of policies mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss is to achieve zero deforestation in the global supply chain of key commodities, such as palm oil and soybean. However, the extent and dynamics of deforestation driven by commodity expansion are largely unknown. Here we mapped annual soybean expansion in South America between 2000 and 2019 by combining satellite observations and sample field data. From 2000 to 2019, the area cultivated with soybean more than doubled from 26.4 Mha to 55.1 Mha. Most soybean expansion occurred on pastures originally converted from natural vegetation for cattle production. The most rapid expansion occurred in the Brazilian Amazon, where soybean area increased more than tenfold, from 0.4 Mha to 4.6 Mha. Across the continent, 9% of forest loss was converted to soybean by 2016. Soybean-driven deforestation was concentrated at the active frontiers, nearly half located in the Brazilian Cerrado. Efforts to limit future deforestation must consider how soybean expansion may drive deforestation indirectly by displacing pasture or other land uses. Holistic approaches that track land use across all commodities coupled with vegetation monitoring are required to maintain critical ecosystem services.

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Fig. 1: Soybean expansion across South America in the twenty-first century.
Fig. 2: Selected regional examples of soybean expansion in South America.
Fig. 3: Year 2001 land source of annual soybean between 2002 and 2019 in major biomes in South America.
Fig. 4: Annual area of soybean-driven deforestation per biome 2001–2016.
Fig. 5: Potential of future soybean expansion onto lands with recent forest loss.

Data availability

The annual soybean maps generated in this study can be viewed and downloaded at https://glad.earthengine.app/view/south-america-soybean and https://glad.umd.edu/projects/commodity-crop-mapping-and-monitoring-south-america. Forest change maps are available at https://glad.earthengine.app/view/global-forest-change.

Code availability

Satellite-based soybean classification was carried out using the GLAD Landsat Analysis Ready Data and Tools52 available at https://glad.geog.umd.edu/ard/home. Custom code for analysing soybean-driven deforestation is available from corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (7864, M.C.H.), the NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program (NNX15AK65G, M.C.H. and 80NSSC20K1490, X.-P.S.), the USGS Landsat Science Team (140G0118C0013, M.C.H.) and the NASA Harvest Program (80NSSC18M0039, M.C.H.). M.A. was supported by CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) Grant 306334/2020-8. We thank F. Monti, D. Saúl and P. Oricchio for assisting with field data collection in Argentina. We thank V. F. Reno and L. V. Oldoni for assisting with field data collection in Brazil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Xiao-Peng Song

  2. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Xiao-Peng Song, Matthew C. Hansen, Peter Potapov, Bernard Adusei, Jeffrey Pickering, Andre Lima, Viviana Zalles, Andres Hernandez-Serna, Samuel M. Jantz, Amy H. Pickens, Svetlana Turubanova & Alexandra Tyukavina

  3. Amazon Spatial Coordination, INPE, Belém, Brazil

    Marcos Adami

  4. College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Stephen V. Stehman

  5. SIG, Cartografía y Teledetección, Departamento de Métodos Cuantitativos y Sistemas de Información, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Carlos M. Di Bella & Maria C. Conde

  6. Buenos Aires Grain Exchange, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Esteban J. Copati

  7. Gerencia de Geotecnologias, Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento, Brasilia, Brazil

    Lucas B. Fernandes

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Contributions

X.-P.S. and M.C.H. designed the study; X.-P.S., P.P., B.A., J.P., M.A., A.L. and V.Z. conducted satellite data analysis; S.V.S. and A.T. contributed ideas for statistical design and area estimation; X.-P.S., M.C.H., P.P., J.P., M.A., A.L., V.Z., C.M.D.B., M.C.C., E.J.C., L.B.F., A.H.-S., S.M.J., A.H.P. and S.T. collected field data. A.H.P. designed online data visualization. M.C.H. secured funding support. X.-P.S. wrote the initial draft with substantial input from M.C.H., S.V.S. and M.A. All authors commented on drafts.

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Correspondence to Xiao-Peng Song or Matthew C. Hansen.

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Peer review information Nature Sustainability thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–8 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Song, XP., Hansen, M.C., Potapov, P. et al. Massive soybean expansion in South America since 2000 and implications for conservation. Nat Sustain 4, 784–792 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00729-z

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