Design of spatial PGIS-MCDA-based land assessment planning for identifying sustainable land-use adaptation priorities for climate change impacts

Abstract

Climate change is an obvious worldwide phenomenon closely related to human development, growth and consumption patterns, and it threatens land use, development, people and the environment. Due to its characteristics, Spain is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the European Union (EU). Thus, spatial planning is considered one of the main instruments available to manage sustainable adaptation to climate change. This article presents an assessment framework for exploring climate change impacts using participatory geographic information systems (PGISs)-multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) spatial planning with the preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE) in sustainable land-use adaptation. Assessment planning applies to any agroforestry system at a regional level for a municipality with higher vulnerability. An indicator-based model with five categorical values was developed to assess twelve possible impacts from climate change and the main threats of climate change to water sources, agriculture, soil, and land management. This model is available to manage sustainable land-use adaptation priorities for climate change in a spatial context. The model discusses the likelihood of implementing and adopting strategies for climate change adaptation as assessed by a sensitivity analysis and a professional online survey. Among the five strategies, scenario A (suitability map) accounts for 8.84% of the priority areas (v) and 2.13% of the hot spots (i) and was the scenario most supported by professionals, while scenario D (priority to socioeconomic) accounts for 3.07% of the priority areas and 10.12% of the hotspots, and the lowest number of professionals supported this scenario. The results summarize foreseeable problems derived from climate change effects that require urgent adaptation activities through spatial land assessment planning. Thus, this study provides some recommendations and limitations from which decision-makers can select the most suitable arrangement for an agroforestry system to make it climate-resilient, and the study is applicable to similar geographical and spatial locations.