Climate change and land use from Brazilian cow-calf production amidst diverse levels of biodiversity conservation

Pasture-based animal production is a determinant in shaping biomes worldwide, with historical and cultural effects. It affects land use, landscapes, ecosystem conservation, and climate change. Converting forages into high-value-food livestock production evolved as essential for human nutrition and health, economics, and poverty reduction. A better understanding of the interactions of livestock with the environment to fundament alternatives to mitigate impacts of beef production comes up against the scarcity of studies on the environmental impact of livestock systems that include estimates of biodiversity and the availability of specific indicators. In this work, we provide elements to support the proposition of sustainable practices, looking at cow-calf production in different Brazilian biomes to estimate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use (LU) amidst diverse levels of biodiversity conservation. GHG emissions and LU were analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. We express the level of biodiversity conservation as average scores (1 = low conservation to 5 = high conservation) of four indicators: native vegetation, monocultures, soil organic carbon, and endangered fauna and flora species in each biome. Respectively in the Amazon, Cerrado, Pampa, and Pantanal, GHG emissions were 7.14, 6.54, 9.10, and 13.49 kg of CO₂ equivalent *kg of live weight gain (LWG)⁻¹, the LU was 89.30, 87.94, 158.84, and 307.24 m²y *kg LWG⁻¹, and the mean biodiversity scores were 4.5, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.3. These results demonstrate that the proposed indicators were able to show differences in biodiversity between the studied systems consistent with current scientific knowledge. This information contributes to the definition of different production priorities according to the peculiarities and current levels of biodiversity conservation in each biome. Holistic management and different pasture improvement strategies have been suggested to increase production, decrease environmental impacts, and regenerate ecosystems. Thus, new opportunities arise to mitigate impacts without generating other problems, increase income, improve the quality of life, and preserve sensitive areas that make up the diversity of Brazilian biomes.