Explorations of future land use change are important to understand potential conflicts between competing land uses, trade-offs associated with particular land change trajectories, and the effectiveness of policies to steer land systems into desirable states. Most model-based explorations and scenario studies focused on conversions in broad land use classes, but disregarded changes in land management or focused on individual sectors only. Using the European Union (EU) as a case study, we developed an approach to identifying typical combinations of land cover and management changes by combining the results of multimodel simulations in the agriculture and forest sectors for four scenarios from 2000 to 2040. We visualized land change trajectories by mapping regional hotspots of change. Land change trajectories differed in extent and spatial pattern across the EU and among scenarios, indicating trajectory-specific option spaces for alternative land system outcomes. In spite of the large variation in the area of change, similar hotspots of land change were observed among the scenarios. All scenarios indicate a stronger polarization of land use in Europe, with a loss of multifunctional landscapes. We analyzed locations subject to change by comparing location characteristics associated with certain land change trajectories. Results indicate differences in the location conditions of different land change trajectories, with diverging impacts on ecosystem service provisioning. Policy and planning for future land use needs to account for the spatial variation of land change trajectories to achieve both overarching and location-specific targets.

Plausible scenarios of future land use derived for model projections may differ substantially 49 from what is actually desired by society and identifying such mismatches is important for 50 identifying policies to resolve them. This paper presents an approach to link explorative 51 projections of future land use for the European Union (EU) to normative visions of desired 52 land use futures. We used the results of 24 scenario projections obtained from seven linked 53 simulation models to explore uncertainty in future land-use developments. Land use 54 projections are linked to statements made by stakeholders for three normative visions of 55 desired, future land use. The visions differed in the scale of multifunctionality of land use: at 56 European (Best Land in Europe), regional (Regional Connected) or local (Local 57 Multifunctional) level. To identify pathways to these visions, we analysed in which cases 58 projected land-use changes matched with the land use changes desired in the visions. We 59 identified five pathways to the vision Regional Connected, two pathways to the vision Best 60 Land in Europe, but no pathway to the vision Local Multifunctional. Our results suggest that 61 policies have the ability to change the development of land use such that it is more in line 62 with land-use futures desired by society. We believe our approach represents an interesting 63 avenue for foresight studies on land use, as it combines the credibility from explorative 64 scenarios with legitimacy and saliency of normative visions.

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As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more ‘sustainable’ conventional biofuels plan and a ‘no-mandate’ scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets.