TY - JOUR
T1 - Land-use and sustainability under intersecting global change and domestic policy scenarios
T2 - Trajectories for Australia to 2050
AU - Bryan, Brett A.
AU - Nolan, Martin
AU - McKellar, Lisa
AU - Connor, Jeffery D.
AU - Newth, David
AU - Harwood, Tom
AU - King, Darran
AU - Navarro, Javier
AU - Cai, Yiyong
AU - Gao, Lei
AU - Grundy, Mike
AU - Graham, Paul
AU - Ernst, Andreas
AU - Dunstall, Simon
AU - Stock, Florian
AU - Brinsmead, Thomas
AU - Harman, Ian
AU - Grigg, Nicola J.
AU - Battaglia, Michael
AU - Keating, Brian
AU - Wonhas, Alex
AU - Hatfield-Dodds, Steve
PY - 2016/5/1
Y1 - 2016/5/1
N2 - Understanding potential future influence of environmental, economic, and social drivers on land-use and sustainability is critical for guiding strategic decisions that can help nations adapt to change, anticipate opportunities, and cope with surprises. Using the Land-Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, we undertook a comprehensive, detailed, integrated, and quantitative scenario analysis of land-use and sustainability for Australia's agricultural land from 2013-2050, under interacting global change and domestic policies, and considering key uncertainties. We assessed land use competition between multiple land-uses and assessed the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services at high spatial (1.1 km grid cells) and temporal (annual) resolution. We found substantial potential for land-use transition from agriculture to carbon plantings, environmental plantings, and biofuels cropping under certain scenarios, with impacts on the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services including food/fibre production, emissions abatement, water resource use, biodiversity services, and energy production. However, the type, magnitude, timing, and location of land-use responses and their impacts were highly dependent on scenario parameter assumptions including global outlook and emissions abatement effort, domestic land-use policy settings, land-use change adoption behaviour, productivity growth, and capacity constraints. With strong global abatement incentives complemented by biodiversity-focussed domestic land-use policy, land-use responses can substantially increase and diversify economic returns to land and produce a much wider range of ecosystem services such as emissions abatement, biodiversity, and energy, without major impacts on agricultural production. However, better governance is needed for managing potentially significant water resource impacts. The results have wide-ranging implications for land-use and sustainability policy and governance at global and domestic scales and can inform strategic thinking and decision-making about land-use and sustainability in Australia. A comprehensive and freely available 26 GB data pack (http://doi.org/10.4225/08/5604A2E8A00CC) provides a unique resource for further research. As similarly nuanced transformational change is also possible elsewhere, our template for comprehensive, integrated, quantitative, and high resolution scenario analysis can support other nations in strategic thinking and decision-making to prepare for an uncertain future.
AB - Understanding potential future influence of environmental, economic, and social drivers on land-use and sustainability is critical for guiding strategic decisions that can help nations adapt to change, anticipate opportunities, and cope with surprises. Using the Land-Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, we undertook a comprehensive, detailed, integrated, and quantitative scenario analysis of land-use and sustainability for Australia's agricultural land from 2013-2050, under interacting global change and domestic policies, and considering key uncertainties. We assessed land use competition between multiple land-uses and assessed the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services at high spatial (1.1 km grid cells) and temporal (annual) resolution. We found substantial potential for land-use transition from agriculture to carbon plantings, environmental plantings, and biofuels cropping under certain scenarios, with impacts on the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services including food/fibre production, emissions abatement, water resource use, biodiversity services, and energy production. However, the type, magnitude, timing, and location of land-use responses and their impacts were highly dependent on scenario parameter assumptions including global outlook and emissions abatement effort, domestic land-use policy settings, land-use change adoption behaviour, productivity growth, and capacity constraints. With strong global abatement incentives complemented by biodiversity-focussed domestic land-use policy, land-use responses can substantially increase and diversify economic returns to land and produce a much wider range of ecosystem services such as emissions abatement, biodiversity, and energy, without major impacts on agricultural production. However, better governance is needed for managing potentially significant water resource impacts. The results have wide-ranging implications for land-use and sustainability policy and governance at global and domestic scales and can inform strategic thinking and decision-making about land-use and sustainability in Australia. A comprehensive and freely available 26 GB data pack (http://doi.org/10.4225/08/5604A2E8A00CC) provides a unique resource for further research. As similarly nuanced transformational change is also possible elsewhere, our template for comprehensive, integrated, quantitative, and high resolution scenario analysis can support other nations in strategic thinking and decision-making to prepare for an uncertain future.
KW - Climate change
KW - Decision-making
KW - Economics
KW - Ecosystem services
KW - Emissions abatement
KW - Future
KW - GIS
KW - Global
KW - Governance
KW - Land-use change
KW - Model
KW - Policy
KW - Scenarios
KW - Spatial
KW - Strategic
KW - Sustainability
KW - Temporal
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84961626569&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.03.002
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.03.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84961626569
VL - 38
SP - 130
EP - 152
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
SN - 0959-3780
ER -