Accounting for monogastric livestock as a driver in global land use and cover change assessments

Abstract

Land systems are described based on various characteristics, including land cover composition and agricultural production. However, it is uncertain to what extent livestock, particularly monogastric livestock, determines land systems. We included monogastrics in a land system classification, and statistically analyzed the land cover composition and agricultural production of otherwise similar land systems with and without monogastric livestock. The results indicate that land systems with monogastrics are statistically different from their counterparts in the classification without monogastrics in terms of grassland area and crop yields, but are less different in terms of tree area, crop area, and ruminant livestock production. We then used a land systems map that includes monogastrics in the classification and a similar map that does not include monogastrics to project future changes in a novel manner that integrates livestock as a determinant of land systems. The results show that including monogastrics in otherwise similar projections yields less cropland intensification and more cropland expansion in several world regions, including Northern Africa and the Middle East. Other regions, such as Europe and Australia, were characterized by less decrease or more increase in tree area in the application with monogastrics, mainly due to the occurrence of open forests with monogastrics. This study prompts a call for improved characterization of land systems for land use and cover change (LUCC) assessments in order to better represent LUCC driven by monogastric livestock. ARTICLE HISTORY

Exploring Futures in Landscape Agronomy: Methodological Issues and Prospects of Combining Scenarios and Spatially Explicit Models

“…When simulating LUCC, it respects landscape fragmentation or configuration metrics observed in the past or predefined by the modeler. In an alternative approach, the CLUMondo model (Asselen and Verburg 2013;Ornetsmüller et al 2016;Eitelberg et al 2017) represents the land system in a more integrated manner by not using transitions between land cover types as the basis of simulation but rather land systems as a whole. Land systems can be described by the mosaic of land covers in the landscape and their spatial structure.…”

A Scenario-Based Simulation of Land System Changes on Dietary Changes: A Case Study in China

“…Agricultural intensity is represented by the yield per unit of crops based on provincial statistical data. Because bovines, goats, and sheep are more directly dependent on local land resources than monogastric species, such as pigs and poultry, and their spatial distributions also have different characteristics [48], livestock were divided into pigs and poultry (pp), and bovines, goats, and sheep (bgs).…”

Mapping Export-Oriented Crop Production

“…Large proportions of the key staple crops, wheat and maize, are traded internationally. Large areas of oil crops (mainly soybean) are also dedicated for export, mostly to feed monogastric livestock herds in distant places (Eitelberg et al 2017). The major export crops in our analysis included crops that grow best in temperate conditions (wheat, barley, and rapeseed), as well as crops that originate from subtropical and tropical regions (cocoa, coffee, and oil palm).…”