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National land use projections Active

By Western Geographic Science Center June 19, 2017

A major scientific challenge in global change research is connecting coarse-scale global assessments, particularly those involving the projection of land use, to scales relevant and useful for analysis and management. We have downscaled land use projections from two global scenario frameworks, the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), and the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Furthermore, we have developed preliminary land-use projections based on a business-as-usual scenario.

 

Conceptual diagram of major components used to downscale IPCC-SRES scenarios.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. Visit Media to see details.
Conceptual diagram of major components used to downscale IPCC-SRES scenarios.(Public domain.)

SRES Projections

We downscaled IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) land-use scenarios to ecological regions of the U.S. using an integrated assessment model, land-use histories, and expert knowledge.

Downscaled projections span a wide range of future potential conditions across sixteen land use/land cover sectors and 84 ecological regions, and are logically consistent with both historical measurements and SRES characteristics.

Results provide a credible solution for connecting regionalized projections of land use and land cover with existing downscaled climate scenarios, under a common set of scenario-based socioeconomic assumptions.

RCP Projections

Study site - ecoregions in the Pacific Northwest
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. Visit Media to see details.
Study area - ecoregions in the Pacific Northwest(Public domain.)

The Representative concentration pathways (RCPs) are the latest set of climate scenarios used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The RCPs are a set of trajectories of land use, air pollutants, and greenhouse gas levels leading to total radiative forcing targets of 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 in W/m2 in the year 2100.

Unlike the SRES scenarios, global RCP projections were designed to include land-use trajectories. Harmonized annual land-use transitions between 2005 and 2100 at 0.5 × 0.5 degree grid cells are available from Hurtt et al. While LULC transition values at this resolution may be suitable for global modeling efforts, local to regional scale land-use modeling often requires RCP LULC transition values summarized at the regional or national scale.

We aggregated RCP transition cells to the ecoregion scale after first employing three methods for downscaling land-use transition values according to ecoregion boundaries. These methods facilitate the use of RCP land-use scenarios within the LUCAS model for a range of scales and models.

BAU Projections

Coming soon…

For more information visit the Land Use and Climate Change Team website.

Below are publications associated with this project.

Effects of contemporary land-use and land-cover change on the carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems in the United States

Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) can have profound effects on terrestrial carbon dynamics, yet their effects on the global carbon budget remain uncertain. While land change impacts on ecosystem carbon dynamics have been the focus of numerous studies, few efforts have been based on observational data incorporating multiple ecosystem types spanning large geographic areas over long time hori
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, Climate Adaptation Science Centers, National Land Imaging Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, Western Geographic Science Center

Downscaling global land-use/land-cover projections for use in region-level state-and-transition simulation modeling

Global land-use/land-cover (LULC) change projections and historical datasets are typically available at coarse grid resolutions and are often incompatible with modeling applications at local to regional scales. The difficulty of downscaling and reapportioning global gridded LULC change projections to regional boundaries is a barrier to the use of these datasets in a state-and-transition simulation
By
Western Geographic Science Center

Scenarios of land use and land cover change in the conterminous United States: Utilizing the special report on emission scenarios at ecoregional scales

Global environmental change scenarios have typically provided projections of land use and land cover for a relatively small number of regions or using a relatively coarse resolution spatial grid, and for only a few major sectors. The coarseness of global projections, in both spatial and thematic dimensions, often limits their direct utility at scales useful for environmental management. This paper
By
Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Western Geographic Science Center