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Life cycle assessments (LCAs) of algal biofuels have typically ignore direct land use change impacts (DLUC), although a few papers have recently shown that the carbon lost from removing the original biomass and disrupting soil organic carbon (SOC) during pond construction can significantly contribute to the climate change impacts. In this study, LCA methods were developed to integrate climate change impacts of DLUC associated with cultivation of microalgae in open ponds and the effects of temporal and geographic variables on algal growth. In addition to direct land use change impacts due to loss of original biomass and the disruption of SOC, this study presents DLUC impacts caused by changing the surface albedo of an area and changing the carbon flux on the land. The methodology is presented with two LCA cases for the production of renewable gasoline from microalgae in climatically similar regions: the Everglades ecoregion and the Tamaulipas-Texas Semi-Arid Plain ecoregion. These were chosen to isolate the differences in DLUC impacts that are created by different land cover types, equalizing the life cycle impacts caused by temperature and solar radiation on algal growth. The DLUC impacts arising from albedo change and carbon flux change contributed significantly to the life cycle climate change impacts and differed between the two climatically similar regions. The baseline life cycle climate change impacts with DLUC impacts in the Everglades are 46.7% higher than those of conventional gasoline, while production in the Tamaulipas-Texas Semi-Arid Plain leads to a 3.0% reduction. The inclusion of albedo change impacts into the DLUC impacts contributed 10.2% of the life cycle climate change impacts in the Everglades and 36.4% in the Tamaulipas. This methodology can help assess the geographically specific sustainability of algal biofuels on a life cycle basis and can guide siting decisions for algal biofuel feedstock production.