Keynote Presentations from the 2nd AVEC International Summer School, Peyresq, 18-30 September 2005

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: 20MB)

Summary of the talk by Nicolas Dendoncker: 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. It will also address how global and continental scale scenarios can be used to inform the development of local/regional scale land-use change scenarios. Examples will be presented based on a number of on-going research projects (VISTA, FRAGILE and REGIS) of alternative techniques for the development of regional scenarios. These techniques include statistical downscaling, optimisation, agent-based models and stakeholder participatory approaches. Each example is intended to highlight specific difficulties in using models for scenario development and the lecture will touch on issues such as spatial scale and hierarchy, model validation, data quality, stakeholder participation and multi-sectoral analysis.

Recommended background literature on this presentation:

• Ewert F, Rounsevell MDA, Reginster I, Metzger MJ, Leemans R (2005) Future scenarios of European agricultural land use I. Estimating changes in crop productivity Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 107:101-116. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2004.12.003.
• Rounsevell MDA, Ewert F, Reginster I, Leemans R, Carter TR (2005) Future scenarios of European agricultural land use II. Projecting changes in cropland and grassland. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 107:117-135. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2004.12.002.

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