TY - JOUR A1 - Cammerer, Holger A1 - Thieken, Annegret A1 - Verburg, Peter H. T1 - Spatio-temporal dynamics in the flood exposure due to land use changes in the Alpine Lech Valley in Tyrol (Austria) JF - Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards N2 - Flood risk is expected to increase in many regions of the world in the next decades with rising flood losses as a consequence. First and foremost, it can be attributed to the expansion of settlement and industrial areas into flood plains and the resulting accumulation of assets. For a future-oriented and a more robust flood risk management, it is therefore of importance not only to estimate potential impacts of climate change on the flood hazard, but also to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of flood exposure due to land use changes. In this study, carried out in the Alpine Lech Valley in Tyrol (Austria), various land use scenarios until 2030 were developed by means of a spatially explicit land use model, national spatial planning scenarios and current spatial policies. The combination of the simulated land use patterns with different inundation scenarios enabled us to derive statements about possible future changes in flood-exposed built-up areas. The results indicate that the potential assets at risk depend very much on the selected socioeconomic scenario. The important conditions affecting the potential assets at risk that differ between the scenarios are the demand for new built-up areas as well as on the types of conversions allowed to provide the necessary areas at certain locations. The range of potential changes in flood-exposed residential areas varies from no further change in the most moderate scenario 'Overall Risk' to 119 % increase in the most extreme scenario 'Overall Growth' (under current spatial policy) and 159 % increase when disregarding current building restrictions. KW - Flood risk KW - Land use change KW - Spatial policy KW - Socioeconomic scenarios KW - Mountain basins Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0280-8 SN - 0921-030X VL - 68 IS - 3 SP - 1243 EP - 1270 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Soto Baeuerle, Maria Victoria A1 - Arriagada Gonzalez, Joselyn A1 - Castro Correa, Carmen Paz A1 - Maerker, Michael A1 - Rodolfi, Giuliano T1 - Relationship between the change in land use in the Aconcagua basin and its correlative sandy coastal. Central Chile JF - Revista de geografía Norte Grande N2 - In the Aconcagua basin the modernization and intensification of land use have resulted both in an agricultural conversion, and the increase in area cultivated. This process has been very intense as far that have entered new areas beyond the limits of the valley and towards sloping ground. This signals changes in land use over the vegetation coverage models. The analysis of the geomorphology of the coastline in detail, accounts for the occurrence of transformations on the beach and dunes that are spatially less significant, but evolutionarily important, since they show a sediment feeding, which could be correlated with changes in vegetation cover in the basin KW - Land use change KW - sediment input KW - coastal sand dunes Y1 - 2011 SN - 0718-3402 IS - 50 SP - 187 EP - 202 PB - Instituto de Geografía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile CY - Santiago ER - TY - JOUR A1 - König, Hannes Jochen A1 - Uthes, Sandra A1 - Schuler, Johannes A1 - Zhen, Lin A1 - Purushothaman, Seema A1 - Suarma, Utia A1 - Sghaier, Mongi A1 - Makokha, Stella A1 - Helming, Katharina A1 - Sieber, Stefan A1 - Chen, Le A1 - Brouwer, Floor A1 - Morris, Jake A1 - Wiggering, Hubert T1 - Regional impact assessment of land use scenarios in developing countries using the FoPIA approach - findings from five case studies JF - Journal of environmental management N2 - The impact of land use changes on sustainable development is of increasing interest in many regions of the world. This study aimed to test the transferability of the Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA), which was originally developed in the European context, to developing countries, in which lack of data often prevents the use of data-driven impact assessment methods. The core aspect of FoPIA is the stakeholder-based assessment of alternative land use scenarios. Scenario impacts on regional sustainability are assessed by using a set of nine regional land use functions (LUFs), which equally cover the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The cases analysed in this study include (1) the alternative spatial planning policies around the Merapi volcano and surrounding areas of Yogyakarta City, Indonesia; (2) the large-scale afforestation of agricultural areas to reduce soil erosion in Guyuan, China; (3) the expansion of soil and water conservation measures in the Oum Zessar watershed, Tunisia; (4) the agricultural intensification and the potential for organic agriculture in Bijapur, India; and (5) the land degradation and land conflicts resulting from land division and privatisation in Narok, Kenya. All five regions are characterised by population growth, partially combined with considerable economic development, environmental degradation problems and social conflicts. Implications of the regional scenario impacts as well as methodological aspects are discussed. Overall, FoPIA proved to be a useful tool for diagnosing regional human-environment interactions and for supporting the communication and social learning process among different stakeholder groups. KW - (Ex-ante) impact assessment KW - Land use change KW - Scenario study KW - Sustainable development KW - Stakeholder participation KW - Developing countries KW - Indicators Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.10.021 SN - 0301-4797 SN - 1095-8630 VL - 127 SP - S56 EP - S64 PB - Elsevier CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Barthold, Frauke Katrin A1 - Wiesmeier, Martin A1 - Breuer, L. A1 - Frede, Hans-Georg A1 - Wu, J. A1 - Blank, F. Benjamin T1 - Land use and climate control the spatial distribution of soil types in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia JF - Journal of arid environments N2 - The spatial distribution of soil types is controlled by a set of environmental factors such as climate, organisms, parent material and topography as well as time and space. A change of these factors will lead to a change in the spatial distribution of soil types. In this study, we use a digital soil mapping approach to improve our knowledge about major soil type distributing factors in the steppe regions of Inner Mongolia (China) which currently undergo tremendous environmental change, e.g. climate and land use change. We use Random Forests in an effort to map Reference Soil Groups according to the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) in the Xilin River catchment. We benefit from the superior prediction capabilities of RF and additional interpretive results in order to identify the major environmental factors that control spatial patterns of soil types. The nine WRB soil groups that were identified and spatially predicted for the study area are Arenosol, Calcisol, Cambisol, Chernozem, Cryosol, Gleysol, Kastanozem, Phaeozem and Regosol. Model and prediction performances of the RF model are high with an Out-of-Bag error of 51.6% for the model and a misclassification error for the predicted map of 28.9%. The main controlling factors of soil type distribution are land use, a set of topographic variables, geology and climate. However, land use and climate are of major importance and topography and geology are of minor importance. The visualizations of the predictions, the variable importance measures as result of RF and the comparisons of these with the spatial distribution of the environmental factors delivered additional, quantitative information of these controlling factors and revealed that intensively grazed areas are subjected to soil degradation. However, most of the area is still governed by natural soil forming processes which are driven by climate, topography and geology. Most importantly though, our study revealed that a shift towards warmer temperatures and lower precipitation regimes will lead to a change of the spatial distribution of RSGs towards steppe soils that store less carbon, i.e. a decrease of spatial extent of Phaeozems and an increase of spatial extent of Chernozems and Kastanozems. KW - Random Forests KW - Soil-environmental relationships KW - Steppe KW - Inner Mongolia KW - Land use change KW - Climate change Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2012.08.004 SN - 0140-1963 VL - 88 IS - 1 SP - 194 EP - 205 PB - Elsevier CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cammerer, Holger A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Historical development and future outlook of the flood damage potential of residential areas in the Alpine Lech Valley (Austria) between 1971 and 2030 JF - Regional environmental change N2 - In the recent past, the Alpine Lech valley (Austria) experienced three damaging flood events within 6 years despite the various structural flood protection measures in place. For an improved flood risk management, the analysis of flood damage potentials is a crucial component. Since the expansion of built-up areas and their associated values is seen as one of the main drivers of rising flood losses, the goal of this study is to analyze the spatial development of the assets at risk, particularly of residential areas, due to land use changes over a historic period (since 1971) and up to possible shifts in future (until 2030). The analysis revealed that the alpine study area was faced to remarkable land use changes like urbanization and the decline of agriculturally used grassland areas. Although the major agglomeration of residential areas inside the flood plains took place before 1971, a steady growth of values at risk can still be observed until now. Even for the future, the trend is ongoing, but depends very much on the assumed land use scenario and the underlying land use policy. Between 1971 and 2006, the annual growth rate of the damage potential of residential areas amounted to 1.1 % ('constant values,' i.e., asset values at constant prices of reference year 2006) or 3.0 % ('adjusted values,' i.e., asset values adjusted by GDP increase at constant prices of reference year 2006) for three flood scenarios. For the projected time span between 2006 and 2030, a further annual increase by 1.0 % ('constant values') or even 4.2 % ('adjusted values') may be possible when the most extreme urbanization scenario 'Overall Growth' is considered. Although socio-economic development is regarded as the main driver for increasing flood losses, our analysis shows that settlement development does not preferably take place within flood prone areas. KW - Asset estimation KW - Flood damage potential KW - Land use change KW - Mountain basins KW - Temporal variability Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-013-0407-9 SN - 1436-3798 VL - 13 IS - 5 SP - 999 EP - 1012 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lotze-Campen, Hermann A1 - Verburg, Peter H. A1 - Popp, Alexander A1 - Lindner, Marcus A1 - Verkerk, Pieter J. A1 - Moiseyev, Alexander A1 - Schrammeijer, Elizabeth A1 - Helming, John A1 - Tabeau, Andrzej A1 - Schulp, Catharina J. E. A1 - van der Zanden, Emma H. A1 - Lavalle, Carlo A1 - Batista e Silva, Filipe A1 - Walz, Ariane A1 - Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon T1 - A cross-scale impact assessment of European nature protection policies under contrasting future socio-economic pathways JF - Regional environmental change N2 - Protection of natural or semi-natural ecosystems is an important part of societal strategies for maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and achieving overall sustainable development. The assessment of multiple emerging land use trade-offs is complicated by the fact that land use changes occur and have consequences at local, regional, and even global scale. Outcomes also depend on the underlying socio-economic trends. We apply a coupled, multi-scale modelling system to assess an increase in nature protection areas as a key policy option in the European Union (EU). The main goal of the analysis is to understand the interactions between policy-induced land use changes across different scales and sectors under two contrasting future socio-economic pathways. We demonstrate how complementary insights into land system change can be gained by coupling land use models for agriculture, forestry, and urban areas for Europe, in connection with other world regions. The simulated policy case of nature protection shows how the allocation of a certain share of total available land to newly protected areas, with specific management restrictions imposed, may have a range of impacts on different land-based sectors until the year 2040. Agricultural land in Europe is slightly reduced, which is partly compensated for by higher management intensity. As a consequence of higher costs, total calorie supply per capita is reduced within the EU. While wood harvest is projected to decrease, carbon sequestration rates increase in European forests. At the same time, imports of industrial roundwood from other world regions are expected to increase. Some of the aggregate effects of nature protection have very different implications at the local to regional scale in different parts of Europe. Due to nature protection measures, agricultural production is shifted from more productive land in Europe to on average less productive land in other parts of the world. This increases, at the global level, the allocation of land resources for agriculture, leading to a decrease in tropical forest areas, reduced carbon stocks, and higher greenhouse gas emissions outside of Europe. The integrated modelling framework provides a method to assess the land use effects of a single policy option while accounting for the trade-offs between locations, and between regional, European, and global scales. KW - Land use change KW - Integrated modelling KW - Cross-scale interaction KW - Nature protection KW - Impact assessment Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1167-8 SN - 1436-3798 SN - 1436-378X VL - 18 IS - 3 SP - 751 EP - 762 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER -