Modeling Global Change in Local Places: Capturing Global Change and Local Impacts in a Global Land System Change Model

Abstract:

Global land use models are driven by demands for food and urban space. However, at the same time many transitions in land use and land cover are driven by societal changes and the demand for a wide range of landscape functions or ecosystem services, including the conservation of biodiversity, regulation of climate and floods, and recreation. Some of these demands lead to tele-connected land use change through the transport of good and services, others are place-based and shape the local realities of land system change. Most current land use change models focus on land cover changes alone and ignore the importance of changes in land management and landscape configuration that affect climate, biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services. This talk will present an alternative approach to global land use modelling based on the simulation of changes in land systems in response to a wide set of ecosystem service demands. Simulations at global scale illustrate that accounting for demands for livestock products, carbon sequestration and biological conservation (following the Aichi targets) leads to different outcomes of land change models and allows the identification of synergies between carbon and biodiversity targets. An application in Laos indicates the complex transitions in land systems and landscapes that occur upon the transition from shifting cultivation to permanent agriculture and tree-crop plantations. We discuss the implications of such land system representations for Earth system modelling.