@article{LotzeCampenVerburgPoppetal.2017, author = {Lotze-Campen, Hermann and Verburg, Peter H. and Popp, Alexander and Lindner, Marcus and Verkerk, Pieter J. and Moiseyev, Alexander and Schrammeijer, Elizabeth and Helming, John and Tabeau, Andrzej and Schulp, Catharina J. E. and van der Zanden, Emma H. and Lavalle, Carlo and Batista e Silva, Filipe and Walz, Ariane and Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon}, title = {A cross-scale impact assessment of European nature protection policies under contrasting future socio-economic pathways}, series = {Regional environmental change}, volume = {18}, journal = {Regional environmental change}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1436-3798}, doi = {10.1007/s10113-017-1167-8}, pages = {751 -- 762}, year = {2017}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{BartholdWiesmeierBreueretal.2013, author = {Barthold, Frauke Katrin and Wiesmeier, Martin and Breuer, L. and Frede, Hans-Georg and Wu, J. and Blank, F. Benjamin}, title = {Land use and climate control the spatial distribution of soil types in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia}, series = {Journal of arid environments}, volume = {88}, journal = {Journal of arid environments}, number = {1}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {London}, issn = {0140-1963}, doi = {10.1016/j.jaridenv.2012.08.004}, pages = {194 -- 205}, year = {2013}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{KoenigUthesSchuleretal.2013, author = {K{\"o}nig, Hannes Jochen and Uthes, Sandra and Schuler, Johannes and Zhen, Lin and Purushothaman, Seema and Suarma, Utia and Sghaier, Mongi and Makokha, Stella and Helming, Katharina and Sieber, Stefan and Chen, Le and Brouwer, Floor and Morris, Jake and Wiggering, Hubert}, title = {Regional impact assessment of land use scenarios in developing countries using the FoPIA approach - findings from five case studies}, series = {Journal of environmental management}, volume = {127}, journal = {Journal of environmental management}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {London}, issn = {0301-4797}, doi = {10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.10.021}, pages = {S56 -- S64}, year = {2013}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{CammererThiekenVerburg2013, author = {Cammerer, Holger and Thieken, Annegret and Verburg, Peter H.}, title = {Spatio-temporal dynamics in the flood exposure due to land use changes in the Alpine Lech Valley in Tyrol (Austria)}, series = {Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards}, volume = {68}, journal = {Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0921-030X}, doi = {10.1007/s11069-012-0280-8}, pages = {1243 -- 1270}, year = {2013}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @article{CammererThieken2013, author = {Cammerer, Holger and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {Historical development and future outlook of the flood damage potential of residential areas in the Alpine Lech Valley (Austria) between 1971 and 2030}, series = {Regional environmental change}, volume = {13}, journal = {Regional environmental change}, number = {5}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1436-3798}, doi = {10.1007/s10113-013-0407-9}, pages = {999 -- 1012}, year = {2013}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Huang2012, author = {Huang, Shaochun}, title = {Modelling of environmental change impacts on water resources and hydrological extremes in Germany}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59748}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2012}, abstract = {Water resources, in terms of quantity and quality, are significantly influenced by environmental changes, especially by climate and land use changes. The main objective of the present study is to project climate change impacts on the seasonal dynamics of water fluxes, spatial changes in water balance components as well as the future flood and low flow conditions in Germany. This study is based on the modeling results of the process-based eco-hydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) driven by various regional climate scenarios on one hand. On the other hand, it is supported by statistical analysis on long-term trends of observed and simulated time series. In addition, this study evaluates the impacts of potential land use changes on water quality in terms of NO3-N load in selected sub-regions of the Elbe basin. In the context of climate change, the actual evapotransipration is likely to increase in most parts of Germany, while total runoff generation may decrease in south and east regions in the scenario period 2051-2060. Water discharge in all six studied large rivers (Ems, Weser, Saale, Danube, Main and Neckar) would be 8 - 30\% lower in summer and autumn compared to the reference period (1961 - 1990), and the strongest decline is expected for the Saale, Danube and Neckar. The 50-year low flow is likely to occur more frequently in western, southern and central Germany after 2061 as suggested by more than 80\% of the model runs. The current low flow period (from August to September) may be extended until the late autumn at the end of this century. Higher winter flow is expected in all of these rivers, and the increase is most significant for the Ems (about 18\%). No general pattern of changes in flood directions can be concluded according to the results driven by different RCMs, emission scenarios and multi-realizations. An optimal agricultural land use and management are essential for the reduction in nutrient loads and improvement of water quality. In the Weiße Elster and Unstrut sub-basins (Elbe), an increase of 10\% in the winter rape area can result in 12-19\% more NO3-N load in rivers. In contrast, another energy plant, maize, has a moderate effect on the water environment. Mineral fertilizers have a much stronger effect on the NO3-N load than organic fertilizers. Cover crops, which play an important role in the reduction of nitrate losses from fields, should be maintained on cropland. The uncertainty in estimating future high flows and, in particular, extreme floods remain high due to different RCM structures, emission scenarios and multi-realizations. In contrast, the projection of low flows under warmer climate conditions appears to be more pronounced and consistent. The largest source of uncertainty related to NO3-N modelling originates from the input data on the agricultural management.}, language = {en} }