Land use

As a land use, the type of use of soil and land areas ( parts of the solid surface) by humans is called. In particular agricultural use is also called land use. Occasionally, the term land use is also used synonymously with land use.

The different types of use of land and forestry, industry, human settlements, transport, the Barrens, etc. - which make up in Germany in shares of 55 %, 29 %, 11 % and 5 %, for example - are captured in the form of a schematic classification, the relatively expensive and takes place exactly in industrialized countries and comprises about 20 to 50 classes, while developing countries are limited to around 10 to 15 use classes.

The type of soil and land use has changed significantly due to industrialization in Europe and has become since the mid-20th century, becoming the topic of spatial planning. Both in the urban agglomerations and rural land use conflicts arising from the superposition and competition between different types of use as well as its direct and indirect effects. In addition to the human life, the culture and spatial structures of the economy and the balance of nature is concerned, in particular the soil and water resources, local climate, ecosystem and biodiversity, for instance by the use-related material and structural loads. At the same time, the importance of rural areas to compensate space of urban spaces and urban functions by outsourcing the surrounding region. Therefore, a periodic determination of land use and its changes is required.

The acquisition of the land use was historically most of the financial administration of ( income and property tax), while it is an interdisciplinary task today to the mainly agriculture, geography, geodesy, remote sensing and spatial planning contribute to a lesser degree soil science, forestry, regional agricultural policy and government support for agriculture.

Intensity of land use

One of the distinctions:

• Intensive use of land - farming with various measures to increase the soil yield, especially dense network of paths, monocultures, drainage and irrigation, fertilization
• Or softer measures such as land improvement and re-parcelling, windbreak belts, etc., controlled fertilization and soil evaluation;

• Eg economical fertilizing, gentle acres with no soil compaction,
• Selection forest, mountain conservation of protected forests and pastures;

Some institutions combine tasks of land use and agricultural policy or the economic development, and in addition also examines the social, political and economic conditions of the country and production economy and its genesis and performance context is explored.

Use classes

In Europe, the land use is recorded since about 1800 terrestrial ( through systematic inspection) - eg in Germany and Austria - Hungary in the wake of tax and land surveying as " culture class ". She goes since then also in the tax and is complemented since the 1970s increasingly by satellite and remote sensing methods and refined.

Mid-1980s was the classification of the land (although land cover ) converted to a uniform EU-wide typing and updated. As part of the CORINE program experts is in any EU country from digital satellite images. The data are processed in a Geographical Information System (GIS) and are now available as digital maps at a scale of 1:100,000.

The 13 main classes of land cover ( land cover ), which provide the framework for all EU countries, are:

• Settlement areas (incl. traffic areas )
• Arable land
• Permanent crops
• Grassland
• Deciduous and mixed forest
• Coniferous forest
• Alpine mats
• Mountain pine, dwarf pine
• Rock surfaces
• Sparse vegetation
• Glacier
• Wetlands
• Water areas.

A very different classification is the LCCS ( Land Cover Classification System), which the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO has proposed as global, but only rough framework. Of the eight major classes of four each relate to (un) cultivated land and cultivated on (un - ) water bodies. Also this system is - especially for arable land - fine divisible.

Direct and indirect land use change

In the context of agricultural land use, especially in the cultivation of energy crops for the production of agrofuels, a distinction is made between direct and indirect land use change (direct land use change, short dLUC, or indirect land use change, or ILUC ). The former refers to the conversion of land that has not been used for the cultivation of crops in cultivation of plant materials. The indirect land use change is the effect that for the cultivation of energy crops are used, which were originally intended for the production of food. Thus, on the one hand rising food prices due to a supply shortage and on the other hand finds a displacement of food and feed production, instead, must be exploited for agriculture for the then new areas.

Since the enactment of the Renewable Energy Directive (Renewable Energy Directive - RED, 2009/28/EC ), which provides, from 2020 to replace at least 10 percent of fossil fuel demand by renewable energy sources, are so-called biofuels in the EU on legal Beimischgungsquoten, tax credits and subsidies strongly encouraged. For the use of biofuels, especially the climate was cited. However, critics point to the problems caused by ILUC GHG emissions down (eg through the rain forest clearance for oil palm plantations for the production of bio-diesel) and it is discussed whether and to what extent these so-called ILUC factors will be credited to the raw materials and their Herkünft used for the production of biofuels should. The IEEP ( Institute for European Environmental Policy) comes to the conclusion that the additional demand of 15.1 million tonnes of oil equivalent by 2020 would (compared to 2008) lead biofuels to indirect land use change from 4.1 to 6.9 million hectares ( an area slightly larger than the Netherlands or slightly smaller than Ireland).

The European Commission has given in this context, several studies on indirect land use change and their consideration in order, the revised versions were later published in part by pressure from the public on the website. The studies come to the conclusion that indirect land use changes have a significant impact on the carbon footprint of biofuels. Particularly biodiesel from vegetable oils such as palm oil, rapeseed and soy can possibly release more carbon than fossil diesel. In response to the results of biofuels should like the E10 sold in Germany from 2020 are no longer subsidized by the EU.