Future Land Use Patterns in European River Basins: Scenario Trends in Urbanization, Agriculture and Land Use

Abstract

Land use in the European Union is expected to change significantly during the next decades. This may cause important hydrological impacts. Land use change was modelled in ten different European river basins using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES). The model results predict some overall scenario trends that are comparable in most of the basins. The ‘(A1) Global Economy’ and ‘(B1) Global Cooperation’ scenarios predict a large increase in urban area plus abandonment of agricultural land. The ‘(A2) Continental Markets’ scenario predicts an increase both in urban area and in agricultural land. The ‘(B2) Regional Communities’ scenario predicts a relatively small increase in urban area and modest land abandonment. Overall trends can also be discerned for each land use type. Urban area increases in all scenarios and all river basins. Agricultural land use decreases in all scenarios due to urbanization and land abandonment, except in the ‘Continental Markets’ scenario. Natural vegetation and abandoned land increase in most scenarios as a result of the projected abandonment of agricultural land, except in the ‘Continental Markets’ scenario. There are also differences between individual river basins. The Loire, Seine and Tevere basins all show a change from agricultural land towards abandonment and natural vegetation, but magnitude and direction of this change differ between scenarios. The same is predicted, but to a lesser extent, in the Ebro, Elbe, Kokemäenjoki and Tago basins. Land use in the Oder basin remains relatively stable except that some pasture is abandoned in the ‘Regional Communities’ scenario. The Thames basin consistently shows high levels of urbanization in all scenarios, whereas land use change in the equally urbanized Scheldt basin varies considerably between the scenarios and is rather unpredictable. In general, the distribution of land use within river basins does change—but not dramatically—over the modelled time horizon of 30 years. The magnitude of changes in land use predicted in this study will not likely cause large-scale impacts on the hydrological characteristics of entire river basins, except for the sediment load of the river. Nonetheless, they may cause important local impacts, i.e. at the level of small catchments and sub-catchments such as increased occurrence of low flows, drying up of streams and flash floods.