Land-use and land-cover change are a significant factor in regional and global carbon cycles. Further, land cover dynamics play an important role in the ecological and economic resilience of the landscape to future conditions. Predicting the influence of land-use and land-cover change on global carbon cycling, food and fiber production, and climate requires gridded inputs defining the land-use and land-cover change (Taylor et al. These gridded land-use inputs describe how the area of the region in different land-use and land-cover classes change over time (Hurtt et al. In global models, different land-use and land-cover classes are often simulated as a fraction of each model grid-cell, thus allow for sub-grid scale variation in land-use. Two major weaknesses in the regional to global simulations are 1) a lack of regionally specific drivers of land-use transitions and regionally specific scenarios of future land-use, and 2) an explicit consideration of management practices on the carbon cycle and land cover dynamics. Recent work by Hansen et al.
(2013) shows a number of regions on the global forested landscape that are experiencing significant changes (mostly forest loss). The southeastern United States stands out as a unique region in terms of land change dynamics. The region is highly productive and largely forested, but with an anthropogenic dominance in the ecosystem. In the southeastern US private owners (from individuals to corporations) control a vast majority of lands (about 90%) and economic factors dominate their decisions. Existing land use studies explicitly address the influence of returns to alternative uses in determining land use choices (Hardie et al. 2000, Lubowski et al. 2002, Wear 2011).
We argue that a limiting feature of previous studies has been the treatment of secondary forests as a single land use, in effect lumping passively managed or unmanaged forests with those that are intensively managed. As planted and intensively managed forests have expanded in the southeastern US and now account for a majority of harvests, it seems clear that these managed forests are distinct land uses with very different costs, benefits and service flows when compared with naturally regenerated and unmanaged forests.
We propose a synthesis project that integrates four major projects, decades of research on land use and forest management in the Southeastern United States, and NASA remote sensing products (Landsat) and algorithms to develop a regionally specific land-use transition matrix that considers the economic structure of land management and land use decisions under varying scenarios. This matrix will be incorporated into the Global Land-Use Model (GLM) to generate new Land-Use Harmonization datasets, paving the way for future integration of regionally specific land-use decisions into global climate projections. Deliverables for the project include: 1) Landsat-based classification and transitions that include managed forest lands for the Southeast, 2) an integrated assessment of socio- economic drivers of land-use transitions in a management-driven region, 3) regionallyrefined land-use transition matrix derived from an economic conceptual framework that considers management, and 4) harmonization of the regional results with the GLM. Our overall framework could be modified and applied elsewhere to develop regionally appropriate matrices that could feed into the global products.
Detecting, quantifying, and projecting historical and future changes in land use and land cover (LULC) has emerged as a core research area for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
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Changes in LULC are important drivers of changes to biogeochemical cycles, the exchange of energy between the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, biodiversity, water quality, and climate change. To quantify the rates of recent historical LULC change the USGS Land Cover Trends project recently completed a unique ecoregion-based assessment of late 20th century LULC change for the western United States. To characterize present LULC, the USGS and partners have created the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) for the years 1992, 2001, and 2006. Both Land Cover Trends and NLCD projects continue to evolve in an effort to better characterize historical and present LULC conditions and are the foundation of the data presented in this report.
Land Use Change Analysis
Projecting future changes in LULC requires an understanding of the rates and patterns of change, the major driving forces, and the socioeconomic and biophysical determinants and capacities of regions.The data presented in this report is the result of an effort by USGS scientists to downscale the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) to ecoregions of the conterminous United States as part of the USGS Biological Carbon Sequestration Assessment. The USGS biological carbon assessment was mandated by Section 712 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. As part of the legislative mandate, the USGS is required to publish a methodology describing, in detail, the approach to be used for the assessment. The development of future LULC scenarios and spatial models are described. The authors briefly summarize the major components and methods used to downscale IPCC-SRES scenarios to ecoregions of the conterminous United States, followed by a description of the Marine West Coast Forests Ecoregion, and lastly a description of the data being published as part of this report.
Figure: Overview of the ICLUS modeling process Climate and land-use change are major drivers of global environmental change. Impact assessments frequently demonstrate that interactions between climate and land-use change may create serious challenges for aquatic ecosystems, water quality, and air quality. In many cases, it is impossible to assess the impact of climate change without consideration of land-use dynamics. The Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (ICLUS) project produced spatially explicit projections of population and land-use that are based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). First, social, economic, and demographic storylines from the SRES were adapted for the United States. These modified storylines were then used to create population projections that would reflect different assumptions about fertility, mortality, and immigration through the end of this century. Next, a mathematical model was used to simulate the migration of people within the United States.
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Then these county-level population projections are used to calculate the demand for new houses, which are placed across the U.S. Finally, we use a statistical model to estimate the amount of impervious surface that results from this new residential development. A geospatial toolset is provided to create and process these high-resolution spatial data, and all of the outputs are available.
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Drivers Of Land Use
Land use is constantly changing. Autonomously as well as caused by changing circumstances such as climate change, economic developments, migration or agricultural policies. Scenario studies allow assessing the influence of policy measures or external drivers on future land developments. You can explore the influence of policy measures or external drivers on land developments, and evaluate the effects on a number of indicators, such as the amount of congestion, the area of impervious surface or the habitat fragmentation. Examples include the effects of the CAP reform on the pattern of agricultural land uses, climate scenarios on land degradation, or population growth on urban development. RIKS has a suite of models and integrated systems available in house that we use for scenario studies in our projects. As an expert in the field RIKS has the tools and knowledge to model land-use dynamics for urban areas up to the complete EU-27.
In out projects we apply and calibrate. In some projects we do the complete study in house to provide results for a number of scenarios only, while in others we apply our models in participatory sessions that allow participants to actively engage and interact in the process. Some projects that included scenario studies are PRELUDE, Creating Futures and Green Infrastructure. In PRELUDE a set of qualitative storylines developed by stakeholders were translated in input for Metronamica, to explore the future of Europe’s land use and environment. In Creating Futures the WISE model was applied in a participatory setting to explore the impacts of a growth strategy in the Waikato region in New Zealand with local stakeholders. For the Green Infrastructure project we first assessed historic land use change in Europe to simulate land use changes for two socio economic scenarios. Please take a look at our publications section to find some scientific articles on scenario studies that we did.
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