Decomposing the Drivers of Past, Present, and Future Land Use Change

Abstract:

Over the past 500 years, global agricultural area has grown from 2 million km² (1500) to 15 million km² (2005), displacing forests and other natural ecosystems in the process (Hurtt et al., 2011). This expansion in area has been driven by changes in population, income, diet, and agricultural productivity. These factors will continue to evolve in the future; however, the effect of these changes on future land use, land cover, and emissions remains uncertain (e.g., Calvin et al., In Press). Additionally, future changes in land depend critically on the implementation of land-based mitigation options, such as bioenergy and afforestation (Wise et al., 2009; Reilly et al., 2012; Popp et al., 2013; Calvin et al., 2014). As all of these factors are uncertain in the future, the future evolution of land use and land cover is also uncertain. This presentation decomposes the drivers of past, present, and future land use change, characterizing the contribution of factors such as population, income, diet, agricultural productivity, and mitigation. In the historical period, we rely on a variety of land-based datasets (e.g., FAO, HYDE). For the future period, we analyze the integrated assessment modeling community’s implementation of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs; O’Neill et al., In Press). The SSPs describe five different evolutions of socioeconomic development, varying several factors relevant to land use and land use change.