Vision-driven Land Use Scenario and Its Implications to Biogeochemical Interaction in The Columbia Basin, Pacific Northwest

English Abstract:

Land management decision is the fundamental driving factor determining biogeochemical interactions between ecosystem and climate. In Earth system models, scenarios of emissions shape how land use change occurs, which is implicitly driven by socio-economic forces. Realistically speaking, natural resources are not commensurable to economic terms, and management of natural resources is ultimately a societal choice. The interaction between environment and land use management is dynamic, complex and interdependent, superimposed on top of this is the complicated decision making process that involves independent variables of socio-economic condition, public perception, and management priorities at local, national and international level. As such, comparing to a land use scenario driven by empirical economic models, visions about future projected by public may provide a more region-specific perspective that integrates both top-down socio-economic policy pressure and regional management effectiveness in fulfilling the socio-economic demand. In this study, I generated a simple but region-specific land use scenario for the year 2050 based on land manager and stakeholder perceptions in the Columbia basin, Pacific Northwest. This land use scenario is then extrapolated temporally to serve as input to a terrestrial ecosystem model (TEM-Hydro) to understand the ecosystem response to changes in climatic conditions. Preliminary land use simulation results showed that, lands under crop, urban and water coverage would likely to increase at the expenses of reductions in pasture, forest, and grassland coverages. Consequently, carbon sequestration potential reduced and the implications to ecosystem carbon exchange may be substantial. Further work will involve the comparison of ecosystem response to dynamic land use scenarios generated based on an economic model (MIT-EPPA) to highlight the uncertainties in land use simulations and the implications to regional biogeochemical interactions.