Global Land Use Research Articles

Advances in Observation and Estimation of Land Use Impacts on Climate Changes: Improved Data, Upgraded Models, and Case Studies

Global land use and land cover pattern has greatly changed in the past 50 years, which exerts direct or indirect influence on the climate change remarkably at both regional and global scales. Therefore, observing and estimating the land use impacts on surface climate is essential and has been continuously promoted by researchers. This paper explores the advancement in the models, data, and application for observing and estimating the land use impacts on surface climate and points out further research needs and priorities, which hopefully will provide some references for related studies.

The future of food — Scenarios and the effect on natural resource use in agriculture in 2050

Do we have the natural resource base to feed future populations? This study gives a quantification of global land use, water use and fertilizer use for the year 2050, for a complete diet and four different futures. Agriculture will need to develop substantially to feed future populations. It is shown that there is a negative correlation between fertilizer use and land use, which makes the necessity of incorporating both in such assessments clear. Water use increases relative to total production and this is going to be a problem unless drastic measures are taken. The high wastage and high consumption of animal products in the developed regions are major contributors to the total global demand. Developing countries' aspirations to such practices are a major factor in increases in diet demand, as are population increases in those regions. In creating a more sustainable food system, a one-solution approach will not do and solutions should combine supply-side and demand-side options. Demand-side solutions should target wastage and animal product consumption. On the supply side, technological development and better feeding efficiency will increase yields. Feeding the future global population, which is necessary to increase living standards worldwide, will require a concerted effort.

The effect of nutritional quality on comparing environmental impacts of human diets

Abstract Several studies support the general conclusion that plant-based diets have a lower environmental impact than animal-based diets. These studies, however, do not account for the nutritional quality of diets. The main objective of our study, therefore, was to explore if accounting for nutritional quality affects the comparison of the environmental impacts of human diets varying in their percentage of animal-source food products (ASFP). We also explored whether meals or daily diets are equally suitable to compare environmental impacts of diets. Fifty peer-reviewed studies were found that examined the environmental impact of diets, generally using life cycle assessment (LCA). Only 12 of these studies were reviewed, based on five criteria: study contains more than one scenario; diet scenarios vary in their percentage of ASFP; the weight of each food product was provided; the study assessed global warming potential and/or land use; diet scenarios are not designed for specific (health) groups. For each diet described in the reviewed studies, we quantified the daily intake of nine qualifying and three disqualifying nutrients. Global warming potential and land use, as provided by the reviewed studies, were expressed in four ways: per day, per daily protein intake capped to the recommended intake level of 57 g; per daily protein intake uncapped; and per NRD9.3 (i.e. a composite nutrient score of a diet). We concluded that the nutrient intake resulting from a meal cannot be used to assess the nutritional quality of a daily diet and, hence, the environmental impact of meals cannot be compared to that of daily diets. Studies on meals were therefore excluded from further analysis. Our results further show that daily diets that had higher percentages of ASFP were associated with higher (excess) intakes of total protein and lower values of NRD9.3. Diets that had higher percentages of ASFP were associated with higher GWPs and LU's per gram protein capped and per unit NRD9.3. Without capping protein to the recommended intake level, GWP and LU per gram of protein were generally lower for diets that had higher percentages of ASFP. Without capping, diets with higher percentages of ASFP are credited for overconsumption of protein. Since overconsumption of protein does not benefit health, we recommend capping to the recommended intake level. The effect of using NRD9.3 rather than day as functional unit was small for GWP. For LU we found no effect. When using NRD9.3 as functional unit, it must be considered that this functional unit requires more data than day or protein. Our analysis is based on a limited number of studies. Although initially a substantial number of studies were found, many of these were excluded because insufficient data were provided about diet composition, only one diet scenario was assessed, or because the studies assessed the environmental impact of meals rather than of diets. We found mainly Western-oriented diets, often designed by the researchers and not representative for actual consumption. For further research on the environmental impact of diets, we therefore recommend analysis on representative daily diets.

Outlook on a Worldwide Forest Transition

It is not clear whether a worldwide “forest transition” to net reforestation will ever occur, and the need to address the main driver–agriculture–is compelling. We present a mathematical model of land use dynamics based on the world food equation that explains historical trends in global land use on the millennial scale. The model predicts that a global forest transition only occurs under a small and very specific range of parameter values (and hence seems unlikely) but if it does occur, it would have to occur within the next 70 years. In our baseline scenario, global forest cover continues to decline until it stabilizes within the next two centuries at 22% of global land cover, and wild pasture at 1.4%. Under other scenarios the model predicts unanticipated dynamics wherein a forest transition may relapse, heralding a second era of deforestation; this brings into question national-level forest transitions observed in recent decades, and suggests we need to expand our lexicon of possibilities beyond the simple “forest transition/no forest transition” dichotomy. This research also underscores that the challenge of feeding a growing population while conserving natural habitat will likely continue for decades to come.

A global view of agroforestry

book reviews ISSN 1948-6596 A global view of agroforestry Agroforestry – The Future of Global Land Use. P.K. Ramachandran Nair & Dennis Garrity (editors), 2012, Springer, 531 pp. £126 (hardback) ISBN 978-94-007-4675-6; http://www.springer.com Both P.K.R. Nair and D. Gar- rity, the editors of this book, have been major promoters of agroforestry worldwide for several decades, and for that they deserve credit. This book is one of their recent efforts towards this aim. The book is organised into three parts. It is unique in the sense that the first of the three parts is entirely dedicated to six keynote speeches made by world leaders at the 2 nd World Congress of Agroforestry (WCA2), June 2009. The speeches, although not well suited to the thematic mode and style of disciplinary books, make essential contributions to the discipline of agroforestry. They address many of the most seri- ous land-management challenges that the world is currently facing and present agroforestry as a ro- bust, science-based land-management approach to fight hunger and poverty and restore environ- mental resilience. The remaining two parts are made up of 18 peer-reviewed thematic chapters. Seven of them address “Global Perspectives” (Section II). All were produced by lead organisers of WCA2 symposia, who are well known in the field of agroforestry, with inputs from other presenters in their respec- tive symposia. The remaining 11 chapters are on “Regional Perspectives” (Section III). All were pro- duced by leading professionals currently spear- heading significant agroforestry-related initiatives worldwide. Thus, the book presents a comprehen- sive and authoritative account of agroforestry to- day. Also, the contents of several of the thematic chapters are on topics that have not been pre- sented much in the agroforestry literature. The third section presents a range of topics related to agroforestry development in regions including Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Japan, Europe, Canada and the United States. Although most of the continents are covered, at least one chapter based on one of the countries of Oceania would have made the book more comprehensive and complete—Australia, in particular, has a very rich experience of agroforestry. Even so, the edi- tors have managed to assemble an excellent col- lection of studies and reviews on agroforestry around the world, encompassing both developed and developing countries. The final chapter, a conclusion by the two editors, presents carefully thought-out strategic and forward-looking suggestions to be pursued for realizing the promise of agroforestry in the future. They have to be commended for making the extra effort to outline such pathways and directions, instead of just reviewing past work. In summary, the book is well written, beau- tifully produced and contains a wealth of informa- tion on agroforestry today. The quality of plates and figures is excellent. It also has a good index and a comprehensive list of references. All the chapters are of high quality, containing detailed, state-of-the-art, up-to-date information on the different topics of interest to a broader, multidis- ciplinary audience. The book is presented in a for- mat which will be understandable to the general reader. It will be most useful as a general refer- ence for information on agroforestry worldwide today, and on the prospects for agroforestry in future global land use. It is of interest to anyone engaged in the practice of agroforestry, forestry or agriculture. The book is also useful as a text- book. Therefore, I recommend it to both under- graduates and postgraduate students of agrofor- estry, forestry, agriculture, ecology or biology, and that a copy of the book is purchased for institu- tional libraries. Zewge Teklehaimanot School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University, UK. z.teklehaimanot@bangor.ac.uk Edited by Markus Eichhorn frontiers of biogeography 5.3, 2013 — © 2013 the authors; journal compilation © 2013 The International Biogeography Society

Comparisons of cropland area from multiple datasets over the past 300 years in the traditional cultivated region of China

Land use/cover change is an important parameter in the climate and ecological simulations. Although they had been widely used in the community, SAGE dataset and HYDE dataset, the two representative global historical land use datasets, were little assessed about their accuracies in regional scale. Here, we carried out some assessments for the traditional cultivated region of China (TCRC) over last 300 years, by comparing SAGE2010 and HYDE (v3.1) with Chinese Historical Cropland Dataset (CHCD). The comparisons were performed at three spatial scales: entire study area, provincial area and 60 km by 60 km grid cell. The results show that (1) the cropland area from SAGE2010 was much more than that from CHCD; moreover, the growth at a rate of 0.51% from 1700 to 1950 and −0.34% after 1950 were also inconsistent with that from CHCD. (2) HYDE dataset (v3.1) was closer to CHCD dataset than SAGE dataset on entire study area. However, the large biases could be detected at provincial scale and 60 km by 60 km grid cell scale. The percent of grid cells having biases greater than 70% ( 70%) and 90% ( 90%) accounted for 56%–63% and 40%–45% of the total grid cells respectively while those having biases range from −10% to 10% and from −30% to 30% account for only 5%–6% and 17% of the total grid cells respectively. (3) Using local historical archives to reconstruct historical dataset with high accuracy would be a valuable way to improve the accuracy of climate and ecological simulation.

Mechanisms Shaping the Transition to Farming in Europe and the North American Woodland

Despite the fact that Europe and Eastern North America both have similar woodland environments, the emergence of agriculture in these areas proceeded very differently varying in timing, speed, and mechanism. To analyze the different subsistence paths the Global Land Use and Technological Evolution Simulator was used, a numerical model for simulating demography, innovation, domestication, migration and trade within the geoenvironmental context. I demonstrate how Europe receives a large package of foreign domesticates and converts rapidly. In contrast, trajectories relating to Eastern North America exhibit a gradual transition in which hunting and gathering and agropastoralism coexist for a long period of time, and agriculture is integrated slowly into the existing subsistence scheme. I deduce from this a qualitative economic difference in the two regional transitions: limited population size in Europe, limited resources in Eastern North America.

Carbon, water and land use footprints of beef cattle production systems in southern Australia

For agri-food products, environmental impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions, water use and land use are all typically of high concern. Concurrent assessment is therefore important to report meaningfully on environmental performance and to avoid potential negative consequences of narrowly focussed environmental improvement strategies, such as carbon footprint reduction alone. In this study, land use footprints were calculated for six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia (cradle to farm gate) using net primary productivity of potential biomass (NPP0) as a means of describing the intrinsic productive capability of occupied land. The results per kg live weight, ranging from 86 to 172 m2 yr-e (where 1 m2 yr-e represents 1 m2 of land occupation for 1 year at the global average NPP0) represent between 1.3 and 2.7% of an average global citizen's annual land use footprint, and highlight the importance of land use in beef cattle production. These results were approximately 10 and 1000 times the normalised carbon and water scarcity footprint results. The diversity of land types supporting livestock production underscores the importance of taking into account land quality in the calculation of a land use footprint. While NPP0 can be used to improve land use assessment beyond a simple measure of land area, further development of the land use footprint indicator is recommended and discussed.

Modeling evapotranspiration by combing a two-source model, a leaf stomatal model, and a light-use efficiency model

summary Modeling and partitioning ecosystem evapotranspiration (ET) are important in predicting the responses of ecosystem water cycles to global climate change and land use. By incorporating the Ball–Berry stomatal conductance model and a light use efficiency-based gross primary productivity (GPP) model into the Shuttleworth–Wallace model, we developed a new model, SWH, for estimating ET with meteorological data and remote sensing products. Since the new model solved the problem of estimating canopy stomatal conductance, it can be used at sites equipped with meteorological observation systems around the world. Compared with eddy covariance measurements, the SWH model demonstrated satisfactory estimates of ET at a temperate forest and an alpine grassland. Eight meteorological variables and two remote sensing products (i.e., leaf area index, LAI, and enhanced vegetation index, EVI or normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI, or fraction of photosynthetically active radiation, FPAR) are required in our model. This will facilitate estimates of ET and its components, and further elucidate the mechanisms underlying their variations at regional scale. In addition, our model estimates ET and GPP simultaneously, making it convenient to address the coupling of these two key fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems.

Comparison of MODIS derived land use and land cover with Ministry of Agriculture reported statistics for India

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the suitability of moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data to study the land use land cover over India. The study is based on secondary data sets pertaining to forest, cropland, pasture, and barrenland obtained from Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES) and MODIS (Terra) global land use land cover data yearly composite from 2002 to 2005. A family of statistical and mathematical techniques is adopted here in order to compare the MODIS data with DES statistics. The comparison at the country level shows estimated forest cover has least uncertainty compared to pasture and barrenland. Comparison at the state level, on the other hand, shows high degree of association between the data sets in cropland ( R 2 = 0.9 ), followed by forest cover and pastureland. Barrenland shows weakest association between DES and MODIS. The computed average accuracy in cropland shows a level of 84% and has been chosen as the best fitted land cover category among all land cover classes selected for the study. Hierarchical clustering of the MODIS cropland at the state level based on the estimated accuracy shows that, except for Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Haryana, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa, which are far off from the true estimate, the rest of the states are in closer correspondence of the cropland statistics reported by Ministry of Agriculture.

A dynamic simulation of the ILUC effects of biofuel use in the USA

The global indirect land use change (ILUC) implications of biofuel use in the United States of America (USA) from 2001 to 2010 are evaluated with a dynamic general equilibrium model. The effects of biofuels production on agricultural land area vary by year; from a net expansion of 0.17ha per 1000 gallons produced (2002) to a net contraction of −0.13ha per 1000 gallons (2018) in Case 1 of our simulation. In accordance with the general narrative about the implications of biofuel policy, agricultural land area increased in many regions of the world. However, oil-export dependent economies experienced agricultural land contraction because of reductions in their revenues. Reducing crude oil imports is a major goal of biofuel policy, but the land use change implications have received little attention in the literature. Simulations evaluating the effects of doubling supply elasticities for land and fossil resources show that these parameters can significantly influence the land use change estimates. Therefore, research that provides empirically-based and spatially-detailed agricultural land-supply curves and capability to project future fossil energy prices is critical for improving estimates of the effects of biofuel policy on land use.

Competition for land in the global bioeconomy

AbstractThe global land use implications of biofuel expansion have received considerable attention in the literature over the past decade. Model‐based estimates of the emissions from cropland expansion have been used to assess the environmental impacts of biofuel policies. And integrated assessment models have estimated the potential for biofuels to contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement over the coming century. All of these studies feature, explicitly or implicitly, competition between biofuel feed stocks and other land uses. However, the economic mechanisms governing this competition, as well as the contribution of biofuels to global land use change, have not received the close scrutiny that they deserve. The purpose of this article is to offer a deeper look at these factors. We begin with a comparative static analysis which assesses the impact of exogenously specified forecasts of biofuel expansion over the period: 2006–2035. Global land use change is decomposed according to the three key margins of economic response: extensive supply, intensive supply, and demand. Under the International Energy Agency's “New Policies” scenario, biofuels account for nearly one‐fifth of global land use change over the 2006–2035 period. The article also offers a comparative dynamic analysis which determines the optimal path for first and second generation biofuels over the course of the entire 21st century. In the absence of GHG regulation, the welfare‐maximizing path for global land use, in the face of 3% annual growth in oil prices, allocates 225 Mha to biofuel feed stocks by 2100, with the associated biofuels accounting for about 30% of global liquid fuel consumption. This area expansion is somewhat diminished by expected climate change impacts on agriculture, while it is significantly increased by an aggressive GHG emissions target and by advances in conversion efficiency of second generation biofuels.

Linking restoration outcomes with mechanism: the role of site preparation, fertilisation and revegetation timing relative to soil density and water content

Global land use and ongoing climate change highlight the importance of ecological restoration as an emerging discipline and underscore the need for successful revegetation techniques. To link mechanistic drivers of seedling establishment with techniques to increase revegetation success, we undertook field-based experiments in degraded peri-urban woodlands in Mediterranean southwestern Australia using two iconic tree species. Over the course of an entire growing season, our objectives were to: (1) characterise soil moisture profiles in relation to site preparation techniques (ripping and created ashbeds) and (2) determine whether early seedling establishment can be increased through site preparation techniques (ripping and ashbeds), plant treatments (various fertilisers and biochar) and early planting during the wet season. Ripping significantly reduced soil compaction and was associated with a significant soil moisture stratification; moisture penetrated to greater depths in soils that were ripped or treated with ashbeds. Particular site preparation techniques (ripping) and early planting significantly increased early establishment, health and growth of tree seedlings. Fertilisation effects varied by species with generally neutral effects on seedlings. Finally, seedlings planted in ripped soils had significantly longer, deeper root systems accessing portions of the soil profile with higher summer moisture. Techniques such as ripping, even in deep sandy soils, reduce soil compaction and alter moisture availability within the soil profile, promoting deeper root growth and thus increasing revegetation success in these degraded Mediterranean ecosystems. Linkage of revegetation outcomes with plant response and physical soil properties associated with particular treatments provides critical knowledge for both restoration scientists and land managers.

Tele-connecting local consumption to global land use

Globalization increases the interconnectedness of people and places around the world. In a connected world, goods and services consumed in one country are often produced in other countries and exchanged via international trade. Thus, local consumption is increasingly met by global supply chains oftentimes involving large geographical distances and leading to global environmental change. In this study, we connect local consumption to global land use through tracking global commodity and value chains via international trade flows. Using a global multiregional input–output model with sectoral detail allows for the accounting of land use attributed to “unusual” sectors – from a land use perspective – including services, machinery and equipment, and construction. Our results show how developed countries consume a large amount of goods and services from both domestic and international markets, and thus impose pressure not only on their domestic land resources, but also displace land in other countries, thus displacing other uses. For example, 33% of total U.S. land use for consumption purposes is displaced from other countries. This ratio becomes much larger for the EU (more than 50%) and Japan (92%). Our analysis shows that 47% of Brazilian and 88% of Argentinean cropland is used for consumption purposes outside of their territories, mainly in EU countries and China. In addition, consumers in rich countries tend to displace land by consuming non-agricultural products, such as services, clothing and household appliances, which account for more than 50% of their total land displacement. By contrast, for developing economies, such as African countries, the share of land use for non-agricultural products is much lower, with an average of 7%. The emerging economies and population giants, China and India, are likely to further increase their appetite for land from other countries, such as Africa, Russia and Latin America, to satisfy their own land needs driven by their fast economic growth and the needs and lifestyles of their growing populations.

UNEP-SETAC guideline on global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

As a consequence of the multi-functionality of land, the impact assessment of land use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment requires the modelling of several impact pathways covering biodiversity and ecosystem services. To provide consistency amongst these separate impact pathways, general principles for their modelling are provided in this paper. These are refinements to the principles that have already been proposed in publications by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. In particular, this paper addresses the calculation of land use interventions and land use impacts, the issue of impact reversibility, the spatial and temporal distribution of such impacts and the assessment of absolute or relative ecosystem quality changes. Based on this, we propose a guideline to build methods for land use impact assessment in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Recommendations are given for the development of new characterization models and for which a series of key elements should explicitly be stated, such as the modelled land use impact pathways, the land use/cover typology covered, the level of biogeographical differentiation used for the characterization factors, the reference land use situation used and if relative or absolute quality changes are used to calculate land use impacts. Moreover, for an application of the characterisation factors (CFs) in an LCA study, data collection should be transparent with respect to the data input required from the land use inventory and the regeneration times. Indications on how generic CFs can be used for the background system as well as how spatial-based CFs can be calculated for the foreground system in a specific LCA study and how land use change is to be allocated should be detailed. Finally, it becomes necessary to justify the modelling period for which land use impacts of land transformation and occupation are calculated and how uncertainty is accounted for. The presented guideline is based on a number of assumptions: Discrete land use types are sufficient for an assessment of land use impacts; ecosystem quality remains constant over time of occupation; time and area of occupation are substitutable; transformation time is negligible; regeneration is linear and independent from land use history and landscape configuration; biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services are independent; the ecological impact is linearly increasing with the intervention; and there is no interaction between land use and other drivers such as climate change. These assumptions might influence the results of land use Life Cycle Impact Assessment and need to be critically reflected. In this and the other papers of the special issue, we presented the principles and recommendations for the calculation of land use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services on a global scale. In the framework of LCA, they are mainly used for the assessment of land use impacts in the background system. The main areas for further development are the link to regional ecological models running in the foreground system, relative weighting of the ecosystem services midpoints and indirect land use.

Climate impacts of a large‐scale biofuels expansion

A global biofuels program will potentially lead to intense pressures on land supply and cause widespread transformations in land use. These transformations can alter the Earth climate system by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use changes and by changing the reflective and energy exchange characteristics of land ecosystems. Using an integrated assessment model that links an economic model with climate, terrestrial biogeochemistry, and biogeophysics models, we examined the biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects of possible land use changes from an expanded global second‐generation bioenergy program on surface temperatures over the first half of the 21st century. Our integrated assessment model shows that land clearing, especially forest clearing, has two concurrent effects—increased GHG emissions, resulting in surface air warming; and large changes in the land's reflective and energy exchange characteristics, resulting in surface air warming in the tropics but cooling in temperate and polar regions. Overall, these biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects will only have a small impact on global mean surface temperature. However, the model projects regional patterns of enhanced surface air warming in the Amazon Basin and the eastern part of the Congo Basin. Therefore, global land use strategies that protect tropical forests could dramatically reduce air warming projected in these regions.

Regarding your article “Baseline time accounting: considering global land use dynamics when estimating the climate impact of indirect land use change caused by biofuels.” Int J Life Cycle Assess 18(2):319–330. doi: 10.1007/s11367-012-0488-6

“Baseline time accounting” does not eliminate the need to choose a timeframe, which remains among the most critical parameters in assessing indirect land use change emissions. The baseline time accounting paper of Kloverpris and Mueller (2013) provides an interesting perspective on an important issue, but the value of their insight is diminished by the failure to include a full consideration of the importance of the timeframe of the analysis. Their examples reevaluate analyses of two existing indirect land use change (ILUC) studies, both of which were based on a 30-year timeframe (Searchinger et al. 2008; Hertel et al. 2010). The baseline time accounting approach uses a 100-year timeframe and the results “are significantly lower (60– 70 %) than the ILUC factors based on the 30-year annualization method.” It should come as no great surprise that changing the denominator of a fraction from 30 to 100 reduces that number by 70 %. The authors assert that their approach removes the need to consider arbitrary timeframes. Their decision to use the global warming potential based on a 100-year timeframe (GWP100) is, they say, “simply ensuring consistency between the ILUC factor estimation and the GWP concept.” But 100 years is certainly not the only timeframe that is routinely used in GWP analyses. If the authors had included in their sensitivity analysis the use of GWP20 and GWP500 or constructed a GWP30 that was consistent with the Hertel and Searchinger analyses, the key importance of the choice of timeframe would have been clear. The authors discuss other papers that make similar use of the GWP methodology, and most of these papers explicitly investigate the effect of timeframe. For example, Cherubini et al. (2011) include results for GWP20, GWP100, and GWP500 in all cases. The baseline accounting methodology converts a prediction problem into a time shift problem. The question of how to compare deforestation/reforestation today with deforestation/reforestation next year clearly requires a methodology to place a value on time preference. The baseline time accounting methodology does not eliminate the need to make a decision about the timeframe for analysis and, in fact, the decision to adopt a 100-year timeframe is the single largest factor that differentiates the results of the baseline time accounting methodology from simpler approaches.

The spatial and temporal change of cropland in the Scandinavian Peninsula during 1875–1999

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) has emerged as an important issue of global change with significant influences on the geochemical cycle and regional climate change. Understanding the historical changes of land use and analyzing the environmental effects of LUCC make such reconstructions important. Based on historical statistics, this article reconstructs cropland area at the municipality level (harad/kommun) in the Scandinavian Peninsula during 1875–1999. The total acreage of cropland increased 36.84 % during 1875–1930, kept stable during 1930–1950, and decreased 14.25 % during 1950–1999. The croplands of Sweden and Norway both increased before 1950 and changed in different ways during 1950–1999 when the cropland decreased by 19.79 % in Sweden but increased by 9.63 % in Norway. The counties in the south Scandinavian Peninsula owned most of the cropland, with a cropland proportion of over 20 %, and experienced relatively obvious cropland changes. Growth centers with a rate of increase of over 5 % during 1875–1910 were found in Skane, Stockholm, the Uppsala counties in Sweden, and the area around Oslo county in Norway. The general cropland distribution showed almost no change during this period, which mainly reflects the suitability of the natural conditions for agriculture. Multi-social factors co-impacted land use activities and induced temporal and spatial variations of the cropland. These factors included food supply, world trade, wars, agriculture policies, the economic and political environment, urbanization, and national differences. Compared with the widely used global land use dataset Historical Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), this study shows different cropland change curves before 1950. This article is a case study showing that the hindcasting model of the HYDE dataset has difficulty estimating multi-determined cropland change in the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the empirical study contributes to the improvement of the accuracy of historical land use data at the regional level.

Global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

Landuseandlandusechangehavesevereeffectsonbiodiver-sityandthecapacityofecosystemstodeliverservices,suchasbiomass production or water filtration. Whereas research onimpacts of land use on biodiversity is a well-established field,research on ecosystem services motivated by Daily (1997)isless developed, but steadily catching up. The MillenniumEcosystem Assessment (2005) on ecosystem changes hasbegun to address this gap and has highlighted the impor-tance of nature’s services for human well-being. Meanwhile,operational assessment methods support decision-makers inplanning and optimizing landscapes with respect to biodi-versity and multiple ecosystem services (Chan et al. 2006;Daily et al. 2009; Groot et al. 2010;Maesetal.2012).However, until now, those methodologies have mainlyfocused on regional systems with distinct spatial boundaries.However, the ecological assessment of land use in productsystems requires a global approach.The basic motivation for this special issue is to integratelanduseimpactsonbiodiversityandecosystemservices intolife cycleassessment (LCA), toallowamore comprehensiveimpact assessment of globally distributed product systems.The work builds on the key elements for land use impactassessment within LCA that was developed in the phase 1 ofthe UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (Mila i Canals et al.2007). The methodology presented here is the outcome oftheprojectLULCIAwithinthephase2oftheUNEP-SETACLife Cycle Initiative. The main contributors to the projecthave been PES, University of Bayreuth, Germany (ThomasKoellner), SEAC, Unilever, UK (Llorenc Mila i Canals),European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy(Miguel Brandao and Danielle Maia de Souza), NSSI, ETHZurich, Switzerland (Laura de Baan), IWOE, University ofSt. Gallen, Switzerland (Ruedi Muller-Wenk), CIRAIG,Canada (Manuele Margni and Rosie Saad), LBP-GaBi,University of Stuttgart, Germany (Ulrike Bos, Tabea Beck,Jan-Paul Lindner and Bastian Wittstock), and CLIOPE,Facultad Regional Mendoza, Universidad TecnologicaNacional, Argentina (Barbara Civit). After a long processof consensus building on framing the methodology, weachieved an operational LCIA method to assess the use ofland anywhere on the globe (Koellner et al. 2013b)anddevelopedasetofcharacterizationfactorsthatallowslinkingspatially explicit land use elementary flows of occupationand transformation (Koellner et al. 2013a) to impacts onbiodiversity (de Baan et al. 2013; Souza et al. 2013) andservices provided by terrestrial ecosystems (Muller-Wenkand Brandao 2010; Beck et al. 2010; Brandao and Mila iCanals 2013; Saad et al. 2013). These characterization fac-tors were tested in a food case study (Mila i Canals et al.2013). With this special issue, certainly not all problemsrelated to the assessment of land use impacts on biodiversityandecosystemservicesonaglobalscalecouldbesolved.Wesee the following five major outstanding questions relevantfor future research to improve the assessment of biodiversityand ecosystem services in LCA:How to combine generic impact assessment with site-specificassessments? Although uncertainties of the current modelsare large they allow for the identification of potential prob-lem areas related to land use impacts in the backgroundsystem of a product and minimize the risk of problemshifting. However, such a generic assessment on a globalscale cannot replace on-site assessment of ecosystems.Therefore, site-specific characterization factors for the

Forecasting technological change in agriculture—An endogenous implementation in a global land use model

Abstract Technological change in agriculture plays a decisive role for meeting future demands for agricultural goods. However, up to now, agricultural sector models and models on land use change have used technological change as an exogenous input due to various information and data deficiencies. This paper provides a first attempt towards an endogenous implementation based on a measure of agricultural land use intensity. We relate this measure to empirical data on investments in technological change. Our estimated yield elasticity with respect to research investments is 0.29 and production costs per area increase linearly with an increasing yield level. Implemented in the global land use model MAgPIE (“Model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment”) this approach provides estimates of future yield growth. Highest future yield increases are required in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Our validation with FAO data for the period 1995–2005 indicates that the model behavior is in line with observations. By comparing two scenarios on forest conservation we show that protecting sensitive forest areas in the future is possible but requires substantial investments into technological change.