Citation:
E. Audsley, K.R. Pearn, C. Simota, G. Cojocaru, E. Koutsidou, M.D.A. Rounsevell, M. Trnka and V. Alexandrov, What can scenario modelling tell us about future European scale agricultural land use, and what not?, Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 9, Issue 2, Assessing Climate Change Effects on Land Use and Ecosystems in Europe, April 2006, Pages 148-162.
Abstract:
Given scenarios describing future climates and socio-techno-economics, this
study estimates the consequences for agricultural land use, combining models of
crop growth and farm decision making to predict profitability over the whole of
Europe, driven solely by soil and climate at each location. Each location is
then classified by its profitability as intensive or extensive agriculture or
not suitable for agriculture. The main effects of both climate and socio-
economics were in the agriculturally marginal areas of Europe. The results
showed the effect of different climates is relatively small, whereas there are
large variations when economic scenarios are included. Only Finland's
agricultural area significantly responds to climate by increasing at the expense
of forests in several scenarios. Several locations show more difference due to
climate model (PCM versus HadCM3) than emission scenario, because of large
differences in predicted precipitation, notably the Ardennes switching to arable
in HadCM3. Scenario modelling has identified several such regions where there is
a need to be watchful, but few where all of the scenario results agree,
suggesting great uncertainty in future projections. Thus, it has not been
possible to predict any futures, though all results agree that in Central
Europe, changes are likely to be relatively small.
