The expansion of short rotation forestry: characterization of determinants with an agent‐based land use model

Abstract

Wood is a limited resource which is exposed to a continuously growing global demand not least because of a politically fostered bioenergy use. One approach to master the challenge to sustainably meet this increasing wood demand is short rotation forestry (SRF). However, SRF is only gradually evolving and it is not fully understood which determinants hamper its expansion. This study provides theoretical insights into economic and environmental determinants of an SRF expansion and their interplay. This assessment requires the incorporation of farmers' decision-making based on an explicit investment appraisal. Therefore, we use an agent-based model to depict the decision-making of profit-maximizing farmers facing the choice between SRF, the cultivation of conventional annual agricultural crops and abstaining from cultivation (fallow land). The land use decisions are influenced by general economic determinants, such as market prices for wood and annual crops, and by site-dependent determinants, such as the environmental site quality. We found that the willingness to pay for SRF-based products and for annual crops most strongly influences the coverage of SRF in the landscape. SRF will in most cases be established on sites with low productivity. However, a decrease in the willingness to pay for annual crops will lead to a reallocation of SRF plantations to sites with higher productivity. Furthermore, our model results indicate that the impact of the distance to processing plants on farmers' decisions strongly depends on general economic determinants and the given spatial structure of the underlying natural landscape. Analysing the relative importance of different determinants of an SRF expansion, this study gives insights into the approach of using SRF to sustainably meet the growing wood demand. Moreover, these insights are taken as a starting point for the design of effective government interventions to promote SRF.

Farmers’ Willingness to Adopt Short Rotation Plantations on Marginal Lands: Qualitative Study About Incentives and Barriers in Slovakia

“…Although this study focused on SRP on marginal land, we found that in many cases the barriers and incentives indentified for SRP on regular agricultural land were also true for marginal land such as the competition of SRP with other agricultural production and expected negative impacts on soil [21,39,43,45]. Interestingly, these two main benefits commonly communicated to support SRP on marginal soil were not perceived by all farmers.…”

“…With regard to financial barriers, SRP can provide access to attractive new markets (e.g., energy, material use). Literature argues that SRP yields are not yet economically viable as a result of high investment costs [26] combined with uncertain returns on investment due to price volatility [43].…”

Agent-Based Modeling for Integrating Human Behavior into the Food–Energy–Water Nexus

“…Falconer et al [55] and Nouri et al [56] asserted that policy recommendations generated by top-down modeling methods may not be effective, because they fail to account for agents' behavioral norms and potential changes in behavior in responses to interventions. As pointed out by Schulze et al [57] and Bieber et al [10], many FEWS policy questions focus on introducing or expanding a production activity for which few or no studies exist, and the agent-based approach enables exploration of these activities by simulating decision-making processes and their implications under different or hypothetical conditions. Similarly, Holtz and Pahl-Wostl [58] emphasized the process-based nature of ABMs as an advantage, which enables causal connects between changing conditions and behavioral responses and/or system transitions.…”

Clusters municipais de bioenergia: um contributo para a prevenção de incêndios florestais

“…Apesar de representar um recurso com efeitos positivos nos domínios da bioeconomia, biodiversidade e preservação da qualidade dos solos, o desenvolvimento de culturas de floresta dedicadas a fins energéticos na União Europeia tem tido uma expansão bastante lenta, ao contrário do que está a acontecer ao nível internacional (Schulze, Gawel, Nolzen, Weise, & Frank, 2016). Este facto prende -se quer pela incerteza associada à volatilidade dos preços, rendimentos incertos e custos de produção, quer pelo longo período de afectação dos solos que inviabiliza os processos de adaptação às dinâmicas dos mercados (Schulze et al, 2016).…”