Estimating the effect of biofuel on land cover change using multi-year MODIS land cover data

There has been a growing debate on the effects of the increase in demands of biofuels on land use land cover (LULC) change with apprehension in some quarters that the growing demand forf bioenergy as a clean fuel will result in widespread direct and indirect LULC change. However estimating both direct and indirect LULC change is challenging and will require development of accurate high frequency, high resolution (temporal and spatial) land use land cover data as well as new LULC models which can be used to locate, quantify and predict these changes. To assess whether the demand for biofuel has caused LULC we used MODIS land cover data (MCD12Q1) from 2001 to 2008 along with cropland data layer (CDL) to estimate cropland and grassland changes in United States for the years 2002-2008 as well as its correlation with biofuel growth.