Scenarios of land-use change in a deforestation corridor in the Brazilian Amazon: combining two scales of analysis

Florian Gollnow,Rüdiger Schaldach,Tobia Lakes,Letícia Debarros Viana Hissa,Jan Göpel

doi:10.1007/s10113-017-1129-1

Florian Gollnow, Rüdiger Schaldach + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1129-1

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Abstract

Local, regional, and global processes affect deforestation and land-use changes in the Brazilian Amazon. Characteristics are: direct conversions from forest to pasture; regional processes of indirect land-use change, described by the conversion of pastures to cropland, which increases the demand for pastures elsewhere; and teleconnections, fueled by the global demands for soybeans as animal fodder. We modeled land-use changes for two scenarios Trend and Sustainable Development for a hot spot of land-use change along the BR-163 highway in Mato Grosso and Pará, Brazil. We investigated the differences between a coupled modeling approach, which incorporates indirect land-use change processes, and a noncoupled land-use model. We coupled the regional-scale LandSHIFT model, defined for Mato Grosso and Pará, with a subregional model, alucR, covering a selected corridor along the BR-163. The results indicated distinct land-use scenario outcomes from the coupled modeling approach and the subregional model quantification. We found the highest deforestation estimates returned from the subregional quantification of the Trend scenario. This originated from the strong local dynamics of past deforestation and land-use changes. Land-use changes exceeded the demands estimated at regional scale. We observed the lowest deforestation estimates at the subregional quantification of the Sustainable Development story line. We highlight that model coupling increased the representation of scenario outcomes at fine resolution while providing consistency across scales. However, distinct local dynamics were explicitly captured at subregional scale. The scenario result pinpoints the importance of policies to aim at the cattle ranching sector, to increase land tenure registration and enforcement of environmental laws.

Highlights

Land-use models describe the interplay between different driving factors within land systems (Schaldach et al 2011; Verburg et al 1999)
This study provided scenarios of land-use change along the BR-163 highway in the Brazilian Amazon by comparing a multiscale model coupling approach with a conventional subregional scenario quantification
We found large differences between the scenarios and the quantification approaches, which emphasizes the importance of scale and uncertainties in scenario quantification

Summary

Introduction

Land-use models describe the interplay between different driving factors within land systems (Schaldach et al 2011; Verburg et al 1999). The increasing understanding of the complexity of land-use change and linkages within the earth system (e.g., land-use changes that depend on teleconnections, indirect land-use changes, or displacement) calls for reconsidering the traditional understanding of a closed system at one spatial scale (Arima et al 2011; Dalla-Nora et al 2014; Gollnow and Lakes 2014; Lapola et al 2010; Meyfroidt et al 2013; Richards et al 2014). Such processes and feedbacks of indirect land-use changes from global to regional to local scales are rarely addressed in land-use modeling studies (Rosa et al 2014)

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Discussion

Conclusion