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Speaker: Mark Rounsevell
rounsevell<at>geog.ucl.ac.be
Department of Geography - Université Catholique de Louvain -Bât. Mercator, Place Pasteur 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Title of the talk: Land
use change scenarios in the European context: interpreting regional scenarios
from global storylines (pdf: 3,7 Mb)
Summary of the talk by a student: Students´
summary (pdf)
Abstract
Land use change scenarios in the European context: interpreting regional scenarios from global storylines
This lecture will present the development of quantitative, spatially-explicit and alternative scenarios of future land use in Europe (EU15, Norway and Switzerland), which were constructed to support analyses of the vulnerability of ecosystem services within the EU funded ATEAM project. The baseline year is 2000 and the land-use scenarios were constructed for three time slices (2020, 2050 and 2080) and for four different land-use types: urban, agriculture, forestry and areas protected for nature conservation or recreation. The scenarios were based on the four storylines of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Nakícenovíc et al., 2000), and further developed by quantifying land use processes and competition between types. The scenarios can be used to explore alternative, plausible outcomes if basic assumptions about future developments change, for example, regarding policy intervention and policy planning. The scenarios reflect changes both in the physical environment (climate change) with concurrent changes in socio-economic factors (e.g. demand for goods, and the influence of technology). The description of the four scenarios is based on many dimensions, but two are most important: the first indicates the relative orientation of the scenario toward economic or environmental considerations, and the second indicates global versus regional development objectives. The result of this analysis is an original dataset and maps of Europe for each scenario and for each land use type on the basis of a 10’ geographic grid.
The lecture will provide an overview of the land use scenario methodology. This will include a discussion of the justification for the many hypotheses and assumptions used in the construction of the scenarios, as well as the limitations of the adopted approach. In particular, examples are chosen to illustrate the advantages, but also the many difficulties of interpreting regional scenarios from global storylines. A discussion of the methodology will seek to identify the ways forward for the development of regional land use change scenarios.
Recommended background literature on this presentation:
Nakícenovíc N, Alcamo J , Davis G , de Vries B , Fenhann J , Gaffin S , Gregory K , Grübler A, Jung TY , Kram T , Emilio la Rovere E , Michaelis L , Mori S, Morita T , Pepper W , Pitcher H , Price L , Riahi K, Roehrl A , Rogner H-H , Sankovski A , Schlesinger ME , Shukla PR , Smith S , Swart R J , van Rooyen S, Victor N and Dadi Z (2000) Special report on emissions scenarios. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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