RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. ▪ What was the product? ▪ What conclusions could be made? ▪ What limitations are there to the scenario exercise? ▪ What problems were faced during the exercise?1
1 We conducted the review along the line of these issues and questions, albeit not necessarily in the exact same order and covering only the points relevant for the scenario exercise.
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. The work on the GEA is still on-going but there are already some preliminary results. One of the preliminary results shows a relation between different types of infrastructure land use, like land use required for energy generation, transport and distribution for fossil fuels and renewable resources.
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. Land use is affected differently under each of the four scenarios. Depending on the scenario, it will be influenced by such factors as demand for food, free trade, phasing out of agricultural subsidies, technological advances, growth of cities and increased demand for biofuels. The competition for land use will result from different goals such as production of biofuels to achieve climate goals, production of food to achieve food security and designation of areas for biodiversity. All scenarios show that investment in health, education and environmentally friendly technologies result in an increase of GDP per capita. This increase will be higher in Sustainability First and Policy First than in Market and Security First scenarios. All scenarios show a slow-down of environmental change, but the peak rate of change and the end point differ significantly. This will lead to different risks of abruptly accelerating changes, which can be irreversible. The reliance on markets in Market First shows a more significant pressure on the environment due to climate change and the growth of infrastructure and the slow-down of advances in achieving social targets. In Market First national economies continue to rely on fossil fuels due to little effort to reduce CO2 emissions. Market First shows, that 13% of all existing original species will be lost and the CO2 concentration will increase over 560 ppm. In comparison, the Sustainability First shows that only 8% of all existing original species will be lost and the CO2 concentration will reach 475 ppm. The total forest area will decline. However, by 2050 in all four scenarios the rates of pasture land expansion and forest loss will be declining steadily. Under the Security First scenario, the most significant losses will be of forests land use. The Policy First scenario shows prevention of changes in land use of terrestrial and marine protected areas. Under Sustainability First there will be an increase in land designated for terrestrial and marine protection. The most significant changes in land use will be in Central Africa, parts of Latin America and the Caribbean and parts of Central Asia as biodiversity in these regions will need to compete with food production and biofuels. The land use for agriculture increases in all scenarios, especially for pasture. Globally there is a slight decline in land use for food crops but an increase in grazing land. The increase is the smallest under the Security First scenario. In Market ...
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. The scenarios provide an analysis of the impact of diverse drivers like climate change, population growth and the rate of urbanization. Climate change will influence all four scenarios and will lead to a loss of coastal wetlands due to sea level rise. The effects will be the strongest under GO, OS and AM scenarios. Population pressure will be high in OS and AM scenarios. Urbanization rates will be high under three scenarios – GO, OS and TG. In the GO scenario the rates will be high because of wealth and technological lifestyles, which will grow in all countries. In the OS scenario they will be high in rich countries as wealth and technological lifestyles grow. Urbanization rates will be high in poorer countries due to poverty and rural decline. In the TG scenario they will be high as ecosystems are managed remotely. In the AM scenario the rates will be moderate as people reconnect with nature and many decide to live in rural areas. The fast urbanization rate will affect infrastructure most strongly under the OS scenario when urban sprawl will compete with agriculture for the best land and water pollution will become progressively worse, as problems relating to poor infrastructure for dealing with urban waste and crop management are not addressed. These three drivers will have different impacts on diverse types of land use such as agricultural land use, wetlands, drylands and wildlands. In OS and GO there will be a long- term increase of conversion to agricultural land use. The TG and AM will see the restoration of wetlands. The changes in drylands will be mainly due to the pressure of land management rather than climate change. In the GO scenario a significant decrease in material poverty will lead to a decrease in dryland degradation. In TG and AM there will be opportunities for reducing dryland degradation, in TG due to technological progress, in OS due to improvement of local knowledge and property rights for better managing agriculture and ecosystem services. OS will see the greatest degradation through the whole period. In the GO scenario the wildlands will be greatly affected by humans who use them for leisure and agriculture. At the same time marine ecosystems and coastal wetlands will be affected most strongly as urban land use will concentrate along coastlines and river mouths. The human impacts on terrestrial ecosystems will increase as the total area for agriculture expands. There will be a significant increase in land used for crops and livesto...
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. The major goal of scenario work is to show changes in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions related to energy, industry and land use changes as well as to different socio-economic developments and a number of other driving forces. With regards to land use, A1 scenario provides different assumptions about technology and resource dynamics, which result in divergent paths for developments in the energy system and land use patterns. In most scenarios global forest area continues to decrease due to increasing population and income growth. The changes in agricultural land use are driven by changes in food demand caused by demographic and dietary shifts (Xxxxx et al., 2007).
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. ATEAM produced two main products: a CD-ROM with an interactive ATEAM mapping tool (Xxxxxxx et al. 2004) and a collection of papers on agricultural scenarios and biofuels, forest land use and protected areas for the journal special issue entitled Regional Environmental Change. One of the results was the production of spatially explicit maps of vulnerability and its components for multiple scenarios and time slices within the next century14. The ATEAM results helped to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental management implementation measures such as the European Biodiversity Strategy, and provided input to debates on the Kyoto protocol and the design of climate protection strategies. The main result is that the provision of essential ecosystem services will alter significantly with global change due to severe European climate and land use changes, but that the vulnerabilities of specific sectors can be reduced through adaptation strategies. Some of the impacts will be positive, for instance an increase in productivity, forest areas and, potentially, surplus land for agriculture. However, the majority of impacts will be negative like the decline of soil fertility, increased fire risk and loss of biodiversity. One of the important results is that changes in land use are affected not only by events inside Europe but also from outside of Europe such as trends in global trade patterns. ▪ Climate change will significantly influence crop production in agricultural regions. The overall surface of arable land in Europe will decline as some regions become too hot and dry, but this will be balanced to some extent as the suitability for crop production in other areas expands. This result is particularly significant in the evaluation of the potential of biomass energy. Large reductions in agricultural areas for food production, especially grasslands, where scenario A (economic) will see the greatest decline and scenario B (environmental) the least decline, will be caused by technological development and compensated by increases in bioenergy production, forest cover, and areas for conservation and recreation. ▪ Climate change will have positive effects on the forest areas of northern Europe but in southern Europe drought and fire will be the main risk. ▪ The Mediterranean is the most vulnerable region in Europe in terms of water shortage, fire, drought and low adaptive capacity. The problems faced during the modeling process mainly concerned the initial climate input...
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. The general results show a gradual increase in forest area in the next forty years, with a decrease in agricultural land for both arable land and permanent pastures. The land use for built-up areas and undeveloped land excluding forest will increase. The results generally show parallel trends for all European countries with some insignificant regional differences. In all four scenarios the most significant land use changes will happen in the period between 2000 and 2030. A high level of urbanization characterizes scenario A1. It will take place across Europe with hotspots near the main cities. In conjunction with a lack of spatial policies it will have significant influence in many parts of Europe. Abandoned agricultural lands will be used partly for residential, industrial and recreational purposes, party for spontaneous development of natural land, and partly for the cultivation of biofuels. The negative impacts on natural and culturally-historic European landscapes due to the growth of urban and agricultural lands characterize the A2 scenario. The level of urbanization will increase due to strong economic growth, which will result in the development in of many secondary dwellings. Demands for agricultural land will increase due to high production level of European agriculture and macro-economic conditions. The agricultural, residential and commercial land use will be increased at the costs of natural areas, which will decrease. The significant reinforcement of the designated natural areas due to a decrease in agricultural and urban areas characterizes the B1 scenario. The level of urbanization will be not as high as in the two previous scenarios due to stringent spatial policies. The requirements for agricultural land will be lower due to increasing agricultural productivity. The modest changes in landscape patterns due to low rate of urbanization and increases in agricultural productivity characterize the B2 scenario.
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. The general tendencies reflected by the different scenarios can be described briefly as follows: Urban change is, due to its small overall share of land, hardly visible. Compared to the base- year it does not change much in any of the scenarios. The two scenarios with migration between European regions (’Clustered Networks’ and ’Evolved Society’) show the highest urban change rates. The spatial patterns of urban change differ in every scenario, in most of them rural areas and small cities are most attractive. Cropland changes are mostly observed in the ‘Great Escape’ and the ‘Clustered Network’ scenarios where cropland is reduced by a third compared to the base-year. Due to expansion of agricultural land and landscape preservation fewer changes can be observed in the environmentally-aware scenarios. A similar situation can be found for grassland changes, however even in the environmentally friendly scenarios the share decreases.
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. All three scenarios show a continuation of trends seen in the past 50 years, such as abandonment of agricultural land and increased urbanization. Due to the different models and data used the time horizons of the scenarios vary significantly. The time horizon was generally 2020 and in some cases 2050. By using different models comparatively for the quantitative analysis and including shock scenarios the ALARM team tried to enhance the validity of its scenarios.
RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS. The initial goal of the project, which aimed to link land use variables to biodiversity models proved impossible. XXXXXX data and other available biodiversity information from NATURA 2000 areas were of too poor a quality to allow for biodiversity modeling. The state-of-the-art pan-European land use change model MOLUSC was found inappropriate for landscape level biodiversity assessment. 19 xxxx://xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx.xxx/index.html 20 BIOPRESS was a project funded by FP5 with the aim to determine historical changes (1950 – 1990 – 2000) in land cover across Europe for the purpose of measuring changes in habitats and their biodiversity (xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxx.xxx.xx.xx/, download: 31 March 2010). The downscaling process, described in detail in deliverable 4.4 of the project, showed some interesting results: The share of urban area increases in all scenarios, however, it was with a scattered pattern in GRAS and a more compact pattern in SEDG. SEDG shows the highest conversion to biofuel crops and little abandonment of pastures, and is thus the exact opposite of the GRAS scenario. Changes in urban land and forestry will become less to that experienced in the past 50 years. It proved to be a useful downscaling exercise in terms of spatial and thematic resolution, when other projections are too coarse and fail to provide distinctive output (e.g. sufficient detail for habitat quality assessment). A distinct advantage is the ability to provide more life- like results and to support stakeholder dialogues. However, the complicated and time- intensive process limits the usability to a small number of spatial units – a problem that might be solved in the future. During the project synergies with the ongoing ECOCHANGE project were discovered and utilized in terms of downscaling.
