Economic‐based projections of future land use in the conterminous United States under alternative policy scenarios

Radeloff, Volker C.; Nelson, Erik; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Lewis, D. J.; Helmers, David P.; Lawler, Joshua J.; Withey, John C.; Beaudry, Frédéric; Martinuzzi, Sebastián; Butsic, Van; Lonsdorf, Eric V.; White, David S.; Polasky, Stephen

doi:10.1890/11-0306.1

Cited by 133 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…We resampled the original 30-m resolution NLCD grid map to a 100-m resolution to give a more realistic size for average land-use change plots (25). We then used the 50-y land-use transition matrices with the resampled 2001 map to generate an expected plot-level 2051 Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projected land-use change impacts on ecosystem services in the United States

Lawler

Lewis

Nelson

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

642

313

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Providing food, timber, energy, housing, and other goods and services, while maintaining ecosystem functions and biodiversity that underpin their sustainable supply, is one of the great challenges of our time. Understanding the drivers of land-use change and how policies can alter land-use change will be critical to meeting this challenge. Here we project land-use change in the contiguous United States to 2051 under two plausible baseline trajectories of economic conditions to illustrate how differences in underlying market forces can have large impacts on land-use with cascading effects on ecosystem services and wildlife habitat. We project a large increase in croplands (28.2 million ha) under a scenario with high crop demand mirroring conditions starting in 2007, compared with a loss of cropland (11.2 million ha) mirroring conditions in the 1990s. Projected land-use changes result in increases in carbon storage, timber production, food production from increased yields, and >10% decreases in habitat for 25% of modeled species. We also analyze policy alternatives designed to encourage forest cover and natural landscapes and reduce urban expansion. Although these policy scenarios modify baseline land-use patterns, they do not reverse powerful underlying trends. Policy interventions need to be aggressive to significantly alter underlying land-use change trends and shift the trajectory of ecosystem service provision.econometric model | incentives | at-risk birds | game species | amphibians L and-use change can greatly alter the provision of ecosystem services. Globally, the conversion of native grasslands, forests, and wetlands into croplands, tree plantations, and developed areas has led to vast increases in production of food, timber, housing, and other commodities but at the cost of reductions in many ecosystem services and biodiversity (1). Although recent land-use change in the United States has not been as rapid as in the tropics, it has been significant. The area of croplands has decreased and forests and urban areas have expanded since World War II (2). For example, forest lands in the contiguous United States expanded by 5.7 million acres between 1982 and 2007. However, basic estimates of net land-use change often hide more complex dynamics. More than 30 million acres transitioned into or out of forest between 1982 and 2007 (3). Such transitions alter landscape patterns and ecosystem functions, both of which affect the provision of ecosystem services.We use an econometric model to predict spatially explicit landuse change across the contiguous United States from 2001 to 2051. The model estimates the probability of conversion among major land-use categories (cropland, pasture, forest, range, and urban) based on observations of past land-use change, characteristics of land parcels, and economic returns, while accounting for endogenous feedbacks from the policies into commodity prices. A key advantage of this approach is that it allows us to simulate the effects of future policies that modify the relative ret...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projected land-use change impacts on ecosystem services in the United States

Lawler

Lewis

Nelson

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

642

313

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“…This feature allows us to assess climate impacts under future socio-economic scenarios that are consistent with the future climate projections that are used. This approach contrasts with previous studies that combined projections of future climate with statistically estimated models that embody current or historical socio-economic conditions to model crop yields, economic returns, or land values (Deschênes and Greenstone 2007, Mendelsohn et al 1994, Schlenker et al 2005 as well as land use (Haim et al 2011, Lawler et al 2014, Lubowski et al 2006, Mu et al 2013, Radeloff et al 2012, Wu et al 2004). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate impacts on agricultural land use in the USA: the role of socio-economic scenarios

Sleeter

Abatzoglou

et al. 2017

Climatic Change

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We examine the impacts of climate on net returns from crop and livestock production and the resulting impact on land-use change across the contiguous USA. We first estimate an econometric model to project effects of weather fluctuations on crop and livestock net returns and then use a semi-reduced form land-use share model to study agricultural land-use changes under future climate and socio-economic scenarios. Estimation results show that crop net returns are more sensitive to thermal and less sensitive to moisture variability than livestock net returns; other agricultural land uses substitute cropland use when 30-year averaged degree-days or precipitation are not beneficial for crop production. Under future climate and socio-economic scenarios, we project that crop and livestock net returns are both increasing, but with crop net returns increasing at a higher rate; cropland increases with declines of marginal and pastureland by the end of the twenty-first century. Projections also show that impacts of future climate on agricultural land uses are substantially different and a larger variation of land-use change is evident when socio-economic scenarios are incorporated into the climate impact analysis.

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“…However, there are concerns that the land use regulations the model is based on will make property values unaffordable to many residents, leading to growth in communities outside of the study area, but still commutable to the employment centers within it. Econometric models based on assumptions of land owner decisions to maximize net returns from land can potentially address some of these issues [53,54].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stakeholder Involvement

2013

Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility

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Abstract:We describe a future land cover scenario construction process developed under consultation with a group of stakeholders from our study area. We developed a simple geographic information system (GIS) method to modify a land cover dataset and then used qualitative data extracted from the stakeholder storyline to modify it. These identified variables related to our study area's land use regulation system as the major driver in the placement of new urban growth on the landscape; and the accommodation of new population as the determinant of its growth rate. The outcome was a series of three scenario maps depicting a gradient of increased urbanization. The effort attempted to create a simple and transparent modeling framework that is easy to communicate. The incorporation of the regulatory context and rules and place-specific modeling for denser urban and sparse rural areas provide new insights of future land conversions. This relatively rapid mapping process provides useful information for spatial planning and projects for where and how much urban land will be present by the year 2050.

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Economic‐based projections of future land use in the conterminous United States under alternative policy scenarios

Cited by 133 publications

References 53 publications

Projected land-use change impacts on ecosystem services in the United States

Projected land-use change impacts on ecosystem services in the United States

Climate impacts on agricultural land use in the USA: the role of socio-economic scenarios

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