Agent‐based modeling of alternative futures in the British land use system

Brown, C.; Seo, B.; Alexander, P; Burton, V.; Chacón‐Montalván, E.A.; Dunford, R.; Merkle, M.; Harrison, P.A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9873-3338; Prestele, R.; Robinson, E.L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3746-4517; Rounsevell, M.. 2022 Agent‐based modeling of alternative futures in the British land use system. Earth's Future, 10 (11), e2022EF002905. 18, pp. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002905

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002905

Abstract/Summary

Socio-economic scenarios such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) have been widely used to analyze global change impacts, but representing their diversity is a challenge for the analytical tools applied to them. Taking Great Britain as an example, we represent a set of stakeholder-elaborated UK-SSP scenarios, linked to climate change scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways), in a globally-embedded agent-based modeling framework. We find that distinct model components are required to account for divergent behavioral, social and societal conditions in the SSPs, and that these have dramatic impacts on land system outcomes. From strong social networks and environmental sustainability in SSP1 to land consolidation and technological intensification in SSP5, scenario-specific model designs vary widely from one another and from present-day conditions. Changes in social and human capitals reflecting social cohesion, equality, health and education can generate impacts larger than those of technological and economic change, and comparable to those of modeled climate change. We develop an open-access, transferrable model framework and provide UK-SSP projections to 2080 at 1 km2 resolution, revealing large differences in land management intensities, provision of a range of ecosystem services, and the knowledge and motivations underlying land manager decision-making. These differences suggest the existence of large but underappreciated areas of scenario space, within which novel options for land system sustainability could occur.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002905
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Soils and Land Use (Science Area 2017-) Biodiversity (Science Area 2017-) Hydro-climate Risks (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	2328-4277
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open Access paper - full text available via Official URL link.
Additional Keywords:	land use change, land use model, scenario analysis, socio-economic scenario, model evaluation, TRACE
NORA Subject Terms:	Earth Sciences
Date made live:	14 Dec 2022 16:46 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/533621

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002905

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

Soils and Land Use (Science Area 2017-)
Biodiversity (Science Area 2017-)
Hydro-climate Risks (Science Area 2017-)

ISSN:

2328-4277

Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:

Open Access paper - full text available via Official URL link.

Additional Keywords:

land use change, land use model, scenario analysis, socio-economic scenario, model evaluation, TRACE