Methods for land use impact assessment: A review

• We identified the most frequently used methods in land use impact assessment.
• A comparison of the methods based on several criteria was carried out.
• Agricultural land use is by far the most common area of study within the methods.
• Incentive driven methods, like LCA, arouse the most interest in this field.

Many types of methods to assess land use impact have been developed. Nevertheless a systematic synthesis of all these approaches is necessary to highlight the most commonly used and most effective methods. Given the growing interest in this area of research, a review of the different methods of assessing land use impact (LUI) was performed using bibliometric analysis. One hundred eighty seven articles of agricultural and biological science, and environmental sciences were examined. According to our results, the most frequently used land use assessment methods are Life-Cycle Assessment, Material Flow Analysis/Input–Output Analysis, Environmental Impact Assessment and Ecological Footprint. Comparison of the methods allowed their specific features to be identified and to arrive at the conclusion that a combination of several methods is the best basis for a comprehensive analysis of land use impact assessment.