Impacts of future agricultural change on ecosystem service indicators

Abstract

A future of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, changing climate, growing human populations, and shifting socioeconomic conditions means that the global agricultural system will need to adapt in order to feed the world.These changes will affect not only agricultural land, but terrestrial ecosystems in general. Here, we use the coupled land use and vegetation model LandSyMM to quantify future land use change and resulting impacts on ecosystem service indicators including carbon sequestration, runoff, and nitrogen pollution. We additionally hold certain variables, such as climate or land 5 use, constant to assess the relative contribution of different drivers to the projected impacts. While indicators of some ecosystem services (e.g., flood and drought risk) see trends that are mostly dominated by the direct effects of climate change, others (e.g., carbon sequestration) depend critically on land use and management. Scenarios in which climate change mitigation is more difficult (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 3 and 5) have the strongest impacts on ecosystem service indicators, such as a loss of 13-19% of land in biodiversity hotspots and a 28% increase in nitrogen pollution. Evaluating a suite of ecosystem service 10 indicators across scenarios enables the identification of tradeoffs and co-benefits associated with different climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and socioeconomic developments.

How different COVID-19 recovery paths affect human health, environmental sustainability, and food affordability: a modelling study

“…LandSyMM is a coupled, global-gridded land use, ecosystem, and food system model that uses the Lund-Potsdam-Jena general ecosystem simulator (LPJ-GUESS) and the Parsimonious Land Use Model version 2 (PLUMv2) to simulate land use change under different climate and socioeconomic projections. 20 , 21 LPJ-GUESS, a dynamic vegetation model, determines potential yields under climate projections for different crop functional types at different fertiliser and irrigation use levels. PLUMv2, a land use and food system model, uses calibrated potential yields from LPJ-GUESS, irrigation and fertiliser application rates, and other management intensities (eg, pesticides, lime application rates, and reseeding of grasslands) to meet demand for seven agricultural commodities—cereals, fruits and vegetables, oil crops, pulses, starchy roots, ruminant products, and monogastric products—for population and economic output projections.…”

Global and regional health and food security under strict conservation scenarios

“…The Land System Modular Model (LandSyMM) 17 , is a state of the art global land use model that couples a dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS, SI material) with a food and land system model (PLUM, SI material). LandSyMM generates 'potential yields', using the dynamic vegetation module (LPJ-GUESS), for every grid cell and crop under local climate and soil conditions, and different fertiliser and irrigation regimes while accounting for changing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and climate.…”

“…Here we use a state-of the art modelling framework, LandSyMM 17 , to address such gaps. We investigate the human health and food security consequences assuming that stringent and radical conservation measures for biodiversity protection are implemented.…”

A New Modelling Approach to Adaptation-Mitigation in the Land System

“…These scenarios explore different futures such as different levels of economic growth, population demographics, international trade regimes and dietary preferences. The different scenarios enable the investigation of long-term impacts of policy measures on ecosystem services such as carbon storage, runoff, nitrogen losses, biogenic volatile organic compounds and biodiversity hotspots (Henry et al 2019;Rabin et al 2020). Despite the recent improvements, more research is needed to better reflect the reality of our complex world, e.g.…”

“…the rise in vegetarianism and veganism), as well as changes mediated by market prices are both likely to be important for these demand-driven adaptations. And these adaptations may have climate-change mitigation co-benefits through reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land use, as well as reducing fresh-water over-use, water and air pollution, protecting wildlife, restoring lands back to forests or grassland (Rabin et al 2020).…”