Modelling continental land use change and ecosystem services with market feedbacks at high spatial resolution
Journal paper, published in Environmental Modelling & Software
In a globalised world, land use change outlooks are influenced by both locally heterogeneous land attributes and world markets. We demonstrate the importance of high resolution land heterogeneity representation in understanding local impacts of future global scenarios with carbon markets and land competition influencing food prices.
A methodologically unique Australian continental model is presented with bottom-up parcel scale granularity in land use change, food, carbon, water, and biodiversity ecosystem service supply determination, and partial equilibrium food price impacts of land competition.
We show that food price feedbacks produce modest aggregate national land use and ecosystem service supply changes. However, high resolution results show amplified land use change and ecosystem service impact in some places and muted impacts in other areas relative to national averages.
We conclude that fine granularity modelling of geographic diversity produces local land use change and ecosystem service impact insights not discernible with other approaches.
Authors
Jeffery D Connor, Brett A Bryan, Martin Nolan, Florian Stock, Lei Gao, Simon Dunstall, Paul Graham, Andreas Ernst, David Newth, Mike Grundy and Steve Hatfield-Dodds
Access the publication in the CSIRO Research Publications Repository.