LUCE Lectures
LUCE Lectures
LUCE Lectures
There are different types of land use, and urbanization (type of land use) is a big part of this.
Furthermore, we are not good at taking care of the land that we have on earth.
Challenges: we have limited resources (limited land) and we want to use that land for all these use
cases as depicted above.
In 1700: there was a little used. By humans (almost 10%) and more than 45% was still wild or semi-
natural (also 45%).
Thus the last 300 years a lot have change because of the human influence on the environment.
Because of social economic development we see a pattern of deforestation that leads than to
reforestation. We can put every country on the part of the curve and as you move across this curve you
find a transition. Europe has past the stage a long time ago and are now in the post-transition.
This transition is due to: Agricultural intensification, New technologies, Urbanization &
Industrialization, Environmental Awareness, Policies & regulations, and Globalization.
You can categorize all the countries where they are on the forest transition phase:
1. Pre-transition: Suriname, Guyana
2. Early-transition: Peru, Central Africa, Kenia..
3. Late-transition: Brazil, Argentina, Australia
4. Post-transition: Europe, North America, Russia, China
Population growth:
- Expect population growth to continue to 10 billion people in 2100.
- Especially in Africa. Asia will also increase but expect to decrease after 2050.
We have reached a peak of agricultural land use (in 2000) and is now falling. This is due to a
reduction in global pasture.
- Does not mean that it has peaked everywhere. In tropical regions, it continues to increase.
- Reached peak, but we produce more; this is due to better productivity.
How did we increase the productivity?
- Green revolution
- New Technologies
- Fertilizers use (nitrogen): due to this we can produce so much food.
The world population is increasing, and there will be a less percentage that is in extreme poverty
when you compare it to 1820. That the world will be in less poverty has implications on land use.
More consumption of meat and dairy.
China is an example of this theory. Due to the better social economics of this country. It completely
changed the diet of the population. Chinese population consumes a lot more meat.
This shows if everyone in the world adopted the average diet of a given country vs. GDP per capita.
The countries with the lowest GDP per capita use the lowest land and the highest use the most land.
Highest Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram food: Beef, Lamb, Prawns, Cheese.
Highest Annual deforestation: Cattle, Oilseeds, Forestry logging, Cereals …
The rural population is expected to flatten, and the urban population is expected to increase. Thus the
increase in population will live in urban areas and not in in rural areas.
There will be an increasing demand for housing in urban areas.
What are the effects when there is a higher demand for urban areas?
- People tend to move to the hotspots, thus to the cities. The big cities will grow more and
more. Land use change, but also more economic change.
- More slums: group of individuals living under the same roof and lacking one or more from
water, sanitation, sufficient living area, and security. There are a lot of slums in Central
Africa.
Topic 2: land-climate-interaction
Land systems drive climate change.
- To stop climate change we must cut greenhouse gas emissions and use land to draw down
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
- The food system produces around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. solutions:
better farming practices, halting deforestation, healthier diets, and stop food waste.
Effects of land use change on the climate:
- Precipitation pattern: due to deforestation, there is a higher albedo and reduced precipitation
rates.
- Tropical tree cover: major source of CO2 emissions.
Land use can reduce and absorb the effects of climate change:
- Planting trees will help to store and absorb the carbon from the atmosphere. Land use
practices, such as trees can be act as a net-sink for carbon: they take more carbon in than they
release.
- Planting trees is going to help if it is planted at the right place: applied at grassy biomes such
as savannas can be catastrophic. As it can severely compromise ecosystems services,
including hydrology and soil nutrient cycles, and reduce biodiversity.
there is also a trade-off: we need to plant trees, but we also need to produce food.
Agricultural intensification: process of increasing the use of capital, and inputs (fertilizers,
machinery) relative to land area.
- Lot of land spared because of agricultural intensification.
- Increasing productivity comes at the cost of using more machinery, fertilizers, and pesticides.
- Netherlands is one of the top produces, but also uses a lot of fertilizers (meststof).
67% of the global nitrous exodie emissions are due to agriculture…
Excess nitrogen: difference between nutrient inputs (from fertilizers, manure) and the amount
harvested in crop material. This represents nitrogen that is lost to the environment and can create
ecological imbalances in ecosystems and water bodies. In the Netherlands this is a lot! We use far
more fertilizer than we should…
Greenhouse gas emissions: 1/3 of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems. With
the most coming from beef, dark chocolate, lamb and coffee.
Tillage: is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as
digging, stirring and overturning.
Conservation agriculture/ no-till management has a lot of benefits such as: better water holding
capacity, less carbon dioxide released, less soil erosion and more.
lot of farmers do not go for this, because of the less output productivity.
Trade-offs: if we loose a bit of biodiversity, then we will gain production and the other way around.
Design cities, we are losing biodiversity.
Synergies (win-win) are scarce in biodiversity, trade-offs are dominant.
There can be deforestation to create “cultural landscapes”. So trade-off of loss of biodiversity, to gain
a service of values for us.
Topic 5: Telecoupling
Telecoupling: is a strategy that comprehensively analyzes both the socioeconomic and environmental
impacts over long distances.
Topic 6: Land Governance
It refers to set of processes, rules and institutions through which decisions about land use
management, and ownerships are made and implemented.
it includes the mechanisms by which land is allocated, accessed, and controlled within a society.
Land governance is a crucial aspect of sustainable development, as it influences various social,
economic, and environmental factors.
For example: land use planning, policies, regulations. It regulates everything.
1% of farms operate 70% of worlds’ farmland. That is why we need land governance.
There are trade-offs again. Because that 1% is probably very efficient and has a high productivity.
Land grabbing: big companies or countries that buy or lease land to other countries. For the purpose
of security, in terms of food security, we can lease land in other countries to produce the food.
Congo is most affected by land grabs, but also Indonesia, Cameroon, or Ukraine.
Land use planning is very complex..
Every policy has different effects and which is the best one comes down to its effectiveness. These
different policies can have different effectiveness and it also depends on the place. There is not silver
bullet on which policy is the most effective.
Biomes: represent ecosystems like rain forests or savannas. these are natural biomes.
Anthropogenic biomes of the world: more than 75% of land is influenced by humans. Such as
croplands.
Croplands and Rangelands (agriculture) represent a huge portion of the available land 38%.
it is the largest biome of land of earth today.
the increase of pasture and cropland comes at the expanse of forest and natural areas.
the cropland area has not changed much in the last 40 years, but there is a lot of crop production.
This is due the increase in yield (productivity). This increase in yield is due to the use of
fertilizers. Which has increased 6 times as much compared to 1960.
Take-home message 1: agriculture has transformed our planet, not only by expanding the area, but
also intensively using this area. It is taking up so much of our planet.
Agriculture is not only for food production also for: biofuels or clothing.
Biofuels: represent 1% of global agricultural area. So, the focus is food production.
however, biofuels do have an increasing rate, so it still matters.
Graph show the extinction rates of animals. These values are 100 times higher than the
background rate.
What are the drivers of biodiversity loss: habitat loss, pollution (pesticide and fertilizer),
illegal hunting, overexploitation (fish), climate change, invasive species.
Agriculture is a major driver on habitat loss, pollution and climate change.
3. Biogeochemical flows: this includes the nitrogen problem. The amount of reactive nitrogen is
a problem and this nitrogen has increased 4 times then the natural range.
is due the Haber Bosch process. This Haber Bosch process has been used for the
construction of the fertilizers and this a major driver of the increase of reactive nitrogen.
86% of additional Nitrogen is due to agriculture.
4. Freshwater Use:
Irrigated land: using more water on agricultural land. This increased a lot (doubled last 40
years). This increase is mostly for agriculture. 70% of extra water usage is due to agriculture.
5. Climate Change: Agriculture is the sector which produces 24% of the greenhouse gas
emissions.
- Methane from rice production and from cows
- Carbon emissions from fertilizers and deforestation.
the deforestation have the biggest impact on the emissions as it comes from burning of
biomass and soil. Methane from the live-stock production has second biggest impact. Third
impact is from the nitrogen from fertilizers.
Take-home message 2: Agriculture is the most important driver of many of our environmental
problems. It is behind a lot of planetary boundaries. (and have already crossed the critical state).
Water footprint has a similar pattern: the water that is required for the production. Beef requires 9
time more water than wheat does…
The richer we get the more protein and the more calories per person. So, more demand for meat due to
population growth and dietary changes.
in the future we will use more and more agriculture to meet everyone demand. We have already
pushed the planetary boundaries. If we continue on like this, we need to change the way we do the
agriculture.
Take home message 3: All diets are not equal, in terms of nutrition that they provide. In terms of
kcal, but also in terms of the environmental impacts of a diet.
Solutions
1. We need to halt deforestation: expansion of agriculture and deforestation is one of the major
reasons of greenhouse gasses emissions
2. We need to close the yield gaps: so we need to have more yield achieved. For example, in
Africa, there it has really low yields
3. We need to change our diets: Calories delivered per calorie produced. We need calories used
for human consumption. Som more vegetables.
4. We need to reduce food waste: 1/3 of food is currently wasted. Huge potential increasing the
amount of food we get by reducing this waste.
If we implement the solution above we can stay within the planetary boundaries.
Tutorial 1.1
Land Sharing: A situation where low-yield farming enables biodiversity to be maintained within the
agricultural landscape.
Land Sparing: Where high-yielding agriculture is practiced, requiring a smaller area of land to attain
the same yields and therefore leaving greater areas of natural habitat untouched.
Urbanization: The urban population is growing master and is more than the rural population since
2010. more and more people are living in the cities.
The fraction of urban is very little if you compare it to the croplands or forests.
Why do we care? As the process of urbanization increased rapidly, thus it needs to be cosidered.
Urbanization area in the Netherlands has doubled in 19 years time.
This graph represents the rate of change (cumulated change) or net change of each of the 6 land cover
types on a global level. What do we see:
- Largest net increase: cropland, deforestation is predominantly due to the conversion of
cropland. losing a lot of forests.
- Built up land (urban) is the 2nd largest net increase globally. It is increasing rapidly. Urban
land expansion is a very important land cover type because it is increasing fast.
If you look at the different parts of the world you can see:
- Europe: urban expansion is by far the biggest, and the only one that is positive. The rest has a
negative growth. We are using cropland as we replace it for forests or for urban lands.
- China/India: cropland increase, but since last few years is going down. Urban increases a lot.
Remember: if one land type increases another one must increase.
- The urban land type are everywhere increases (thus they are a permanent increase)
- Middle east/ southeast Asia: cropland increases.
The graphs show per area the relative importance of one land type and not on a global scale.
Because the scales are not the same, you can not compare them directly by amounts.
Decomposition of urban land: the urban land per person in the US is much higher than that of China.
Urban cities get denser, small and medium cities get less denser. The built-up land get denser in large
cities.
these patterns also differ a lot per country.
To reduce the urban foot print you should avoid the development of countries. This is of course
inevitable and it comes thus with trade-offs.
Focus on planning:
Planning you think it affects land cover and land use. More cases that first land cover and then
planning. Often the reverse is case. Plans are adjusted to reality, so land cover change and then the
planning needs to adjust that!
In areas where croplands are very productive (China) we lose croplands. In areas where croplands are
not very productive (Amazon), we gain croplands.
Week 2: Introduction to impact evaluation (causal inference, ex-post analysis)
2. Ex-ante models:
- Used to study something may happen in the future explore hypothetical scenarios.
- Example: assess the potential impacts of climate change (2050)
- Methods: Simulation models
We can classify these policies into different groups such as enabling, disincentives and incentives.
How to rigorously measure impacts of these policies or interventions. paper form Allen Blackman.
in
First difference is before the intervention starts, second difference is after the intervention.
with the ATT you can measure the impact.
Protected areas are the corner stone of government policies. But we learn from fair comparisons that
the impact of protected areas is not that big (between 1-2 to 6%).
effectiveness depends on local context…
Part 2: Simulations (ex-ante analysis)
Now we will focus on the ex-ante models. Thus the simulation models to study something that may
happen in the future and explore different scenarios.
How to model the future rate (or amount) of land use change? Estimate the rate of LUCC.
- Take the average between two or more years.
- Trend observed across multiple years.
- Econometric time series forecasts: AR, ARMA< ARIMA
- Transition Matrix.
Computable General Equilibrium models: look at the whole economy across different sectors.
How to allocate the future rate of land-use change across the landscape?
Location of change: example.
Step 1. Randomly sample afforestation and non-afforestation pixels.
Step 2. Extract pixel information from multiple explanatory maps.
Step 3. Model afforestation likelihoods based on the explanatory variables (method logistic
regression, random forest or Artificial Neural Network).
So then you have first identified the suitability of LUCC or LUCC risk/likelihoods maps (identify
spatial drivers of LUCC) and then you can apply rate of LUCC to the LUCC suitability map.
You have two models (A and B) and the simulation from that. If we do it from the past.
We have the observed of the map.
LUCC modelling: explore/explain the spatial aspects of interactions between individuals or societies
and their natural environment
Land cover: physical or biological coverage of the Earth’s surface. Forests, water bodies, urban areas,
grasslands, etc. Surface features can be observed and are regardless of how land is used or managed.
Land use: human activities that take place on the land and how the land is used for various purposes:
residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, recreational. Emphasis on human activities and
purposes for which the land is being used.
DYNA CLUE
Dynamic Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small Regional Extent
conversion of land use and its effects framework is devised to simulate LUCC by leveraging
empirically quantified relationships between land use cover and its spatial driving factors.
It is sub-divides into two distinct modules:
1. Non-spatial demand module: calculates the area change for all land use/cover types at the
study-region level.
2. Spatially explicit allocation procedure: these demands are translated into LUCC at different
locations within the study region using a raster-based system.
The allocation is based upon multiple possibilities. There are four categories that together create a set
of conditions and possibilities for which the model calculates the best solution in an iterative
procedure:
1. Spatial policies and restrictions: indicate areas where land use changes are restricted
through policies or tenure status.
2. land use/cover type conversion settings: 1) conversion elasticities are related to the
reversibility of land use cover. Some use high capital investment and are not easily converted
unless there is sufficient demand. 0 is easy conversion and 1 is irreversible change. 2)
transition sequence: a conversion matrix present to which other land use/cover type the
present land use/cover type can be converted, in which regions it is allowed. How many years
(steps) it takes, and the maximum number of years that a land use cover type can remain the
same.
3. land use/cover requirements (demands): they constrain the simulation by defining the
amount of LUCC required for the study region. All the changes should meet these
requirements.
4. locations characteristics: conversion happen at the highest preference or suitability.
Week 3: Land Use, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem services
Federico Riva
Land use is increase and it affects biodiversity and thus our ecosystem services. So we need
to properly understand land use changes.
What is the relationship among land use change biodiversity and ecosystem services?
Topic 2: Biodiversity
What we do know:
Defaunation in the Anthropocene: facing 6th mass extinction due to human activity.
the extinction rates for species are 100 to 1000 times higher than what would be expected
without the human influence.
also been investigated: human activities threaten biodiversity.
How can we manage land use to positively affect biodiversity?
- As habitat loss is the first threat to species: thus, land use change is a big threat!
- Confusing habitat loss and fragmentation implies neglecting habitat protection when
habitat exists in the form of many small patches: small, isolated habitat patches may
not support the same level of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning as larger,
interconnected habitat
Most habitat patches on Earth are small due to human activities. But several small patches
hold more species than large patches. Thus, there is surprising value of species in small patch
of grass. To save nature we can think small..
Ecosystem service: “the benfits that humans obtain form ecosystems. The ecosystem
services can be divided into:
- Supporting services: nutrient cycling, primary production
- Provisioning: food, fresh water, wood and fiber
- Regulating: climate regulation, flood regulation, water purification
- Cultural: how we as humans perceive the nature.
so, ecosystem services are complex but they are fundamental for human societies.
Ecosystem services are fundamental for human societies.
Land use strategies can enhance biodiversity and thus, in turn, ecosystem services.
Crop heterogeneity enhances the diversity in agricultural regions.
we need to find win-win situations.
Also, when we think about strategies in Europe. If you would protect habitat in Europe,
somewhere will need to produce the food. So, it would go overseas.
Why is this debate so controversial:
- It depends on which values you want to converse. It depends on what the trade-offs
you are willing to make, and it also involves feelings.
- There are a lot of trade-offs. It depends on…
- And so many other factors.
- Social issues.
Part 2: The geography of megatrends affecting European agriculture
Dutch farms are really entrepreneurial. But will the farms in other parts of Europe evolve in
the same way as the Dutch farms? Probably not.
Systemic resilience
- You have a current state. And you have a desirable future change: this is where you
want to go because for example of sustainability challenges. And the undesirable
future: this is now where you want to go.
- Right now, the system is stable, and this stable has resilience:
- Unhelpful resilience: keeping the marble form flowing to the desirable futures
through pressures (green arrows)
- Helpful resilience: keeping the marble form flowing to the undesirable futre.
Futures studies: the systematic study of possible, probable and preferable futures. We are
trying to use a methodology here.
Megatrends: are long term driving forces that are observable now and will likely have a
significant influence in the future. This is an important methodology for futures studies.
Example future studies/megatrends: what will the population aging (we are certain that we
are becoming older) aging do to our cities or areas?
The megatrends method (systematic approach):
1. Framing:
- what is geography of the long term driving forces pressuring European agriculture, at
the regional scale?
- Where is the agricultural system under pressure to change? Where the pressures
making it more persistent? (think of the marble, current system become more stable,
the marble goes deeper in the pit and it more difficult to move).
2. Orienting: know you will choose your trends.
- Longlisting trends using the STEEP framework
- Shortlisting then the longlist by selection those that are:
Credible and dynamic: must be mentioned by multiple existing academic
Spatially heterogenous: across Europe (because of differences in pressures and or
sensitivities to pressures
Quantifiable: trends need to be put into numbers so you can work with it.
MEGATRENDS
He landed with four mega trends to answer the question: how will farms in Europe change in
2050?
1. Climate change: a warming continent
2. Demography: an ageing continent
3. Ideological shifts
- Productivism: if what you value is large amounts of food production
- Post-productivism: if you additionally also value biodiversity and vital rural
communities than it is post-productivism (about ideology!).
- Environmental action space: a continent running against its environmental ceiling.
3. Scanning:
- Mapping the trends: you use data sets
4. Interpreting:
- What are the likely consequences of the trends?
- Literature review to establish links between a trend and megatrends/pressures.
Megatrends and then the pressures has an effect to:
- Persistence:
- Systematic change
- Marginalization, bad news?
3. Participatory modeling
- Agent based models are more intuitively understood by stakeholders.
participatory simulation of land use change in Vietnam
Why do participatory modeling?
- Mutual learning and knowledge democratization
- Increase policy relevance and impact!
Summary
Useful features of ABM for understanding land use change:
1. Nuanced behavioral representation non-economic components of decision-making.
2. Interactions and feedback human environment feedback.
3. Bottom-up description of processes useful for participatory modelling.
Key concepts:
1. Different modeling purposes
2. Complicatedness vs complexity
Week 4: Lecture 1 Towards Sustainable Land Use
Agroforestry: land use management in which combinations of trees or shrubs are grown
around or among crops or pastureland.
Benefits of agroforestry?
- Creates microclimates.
- Provides habitat for pollinator.
- Increases crop yield, can be debatable.
Organic Farming: agricultural system that uses fertilizers of organic origin such as compost
manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop
rotation and companion planting. Promotes biodiversity and is generally more
environmentally friendly.
We can produce food in all different regions driver for land grabs.