Scenario farmland protection zoning based on production potential: A case study in China

Establishing farmland protection areas is an important measure for developing countries to protect limited farmland resources and guarantee food security. The general approaches lack the ability to simulate the farmlands’ production potential under different scenarios. This paper proposes a modified farmland protection zoning framework to demarcate farmland protection by coupling the Agro-Ecological Zone (AEZ) model with a state-of-the-art farmland protection zoning framework. The modified zoning framework was applied to China, a typical fast developing country. The results indicated that the average potential production of the entire country would increase by 2.96 % in the coming decade if the irrigation efficiency criteria of 55 % established by the National Program for Agricultural Water Conservation (2012–2020) can be fulfilled. Furthermore, the farmland protection area could also be reduced by 2.91 % (2.96 million ha) while the total production potential of the protected areas would remain unchanged. This study contributes two main aspects: (1) The AEZ model was used as a replacement for the general land-use suitability analysis (LUSA) or multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) based farmland assessment models in a farmland zoning framework, which can accurately assess the production potential of the farmland protection demarcation. (2) This farmland protection zoning approach can analyze and simulate a wide range of scenarios on the effect of environmental factors (climate, soil, terrain, etc.) and human production factors (irrigation condition, cropping system, etc.).     

Development stressors are stronger than protected area management: A case of the Pantanos de Centla Biosphere Reserve,Mexico

Evaluation of the management effectiveness of protected areas has become a global priority, especially in coastal zones, where essential services are threatened by land use pressures. To assess the effectiveness of a coastal protected area, we estimated the land-use change (LUC) within and outside of the Pantanos de Centla Biosphere Reserve (PCBR) and interviewed key stakeholders to identify the main stressors causing LUC. The native vegetation cover under the PCBR protection decreased by 65% over 24 years; whereas agriculture and livestock lands doubled, even within the core conservation areas of the PCBR. The greatest loss was in the flooded forest (48%), where the reduction was similar in and around the reserve. The effectiveness of reserve management was affected by drivers of land use change, which include agricultural and livestock enterprises that are run by government programs. Effective management of the PCBR has been undermined by poor management practices, limited capacity and resources, and inadequate zoning design. Protected areas and its surrounding landscapes could be considered to be natural experiments for future research, where high value land uses and conservation objectives coincide within coastal areas that will face a predicted sea level rise, more intense floods and higher temperatures.     

Land use changes in protected areas and their future: The legal effectiveness of landscape protection

It is expected that the application of a restrictive legal instrument would be an important barrier to human pressures on protected areas in Brazil. One aspect that remains to be determined is whether the applied restrictions will be related to the quality of scenarios at the borders of protected areas. The objective of this work was to analyze the capacity for minimizing the impacts on two protected areas and to identify the effective function of the barrier imposed by an environmental legal border. The borders of two protected areas, the Despraiado Sustainable Development Reserve and the Jureia-Itatins State Ecological Station, as well as the corresponding buffer zone were studied. The historical evolution of the land cover/land use of these regions was analyzed by dividing the regions into 900 m² hexagonal units. The scenarios for the years 1962, 1980 and 2007 were overlaid for each hexagon. The hexagons were classified according to the possible effects of conservation, and the results were quantified in terms of the frequency of land use and ecological flows. A simulation of future land use in 2028 was performed using the Kappa index, Markov chain modeling, multi-criteria analysis and cellular automata modeling. Based on the trend for the last 45 years, a very dynamic interaction at the legal boundaries was identified; in certain cases, either conservation or degradation were stimulated, and the intended objectives of legal environmental measures were never fulfilled. The simulation showed that by 2028, the frontiers of these protected areas will retain less than 10% of the natural vegetation cover, and 43% of this area will be covered with banana plantations.     

Land use and land cover scenarios: An interdisciplinary approach integrating local conditions and the global shared socioeconomic pathways

Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes have profound impacts on the functioning of (agro)ecosystems and have potential to mitigate global climate change. However, we still lack interdisciplinary methods to project future LULC scenarios at spatial scales that are relevant for local decision making and future environmental assessments. Here we apply an interdisciplinary approach to develop spatially explicit projections of LULC at a resolution of 30 × 30 m informed by historic relationships between LULC and their key drivers, within the context of the four qualitative scenarios of global shared socioeconomic pathways. We apply this methodology to a case study in the Zona da Mata, Brazil, which has a history of major LULC changes. The analysis of LULC changes from 1986 to 2015 indicates that pasture area decreased from 76 to 58 % of total area, while forest areas increased from 18 to 24 %, and coffee from 3 to 11 %. Environmental protection legislation, rural credit for smallholder farmers, and demand for agricultural and raw products were identified as main drivers of LULC changes. Projected LULC for 2045 strongly depends on the global socioeconomic pathway scenarios, and forest and coffee areas may increase substantially under strong government measures in the environmentally conscious Green Road scenario or decrease in the high consumption Rocky Road scenario. Our study shows that under the set of drivers during the past three decades reforestation can go hand in hand with increase of agricultural production, but that major and contrasting changes in LULC can be expected depending on the socioeconomic pathway that will be followed in the future. To guide this process, LULC scenarios at the local scale can inform the planning of local and regional development and forest conservation.     

Deforestation analysis in protected areas and scenario simulation for structural corridors in the agricultural frontier of Western Bahia,Brazil

The aim in this paper was to evaluate the spatial distribution of protected areas defined by law and their importance as structural corridors. The study area was 7,559,783.69 ha located in Western Bahia (Northeast Brazil), restricted to the limits of the Urucuia Group (Upper Cretaceous), where there is strong agribusiness growth. Currently, a major dilemma in Brazilian public policy arises from the conflicting interests of environmental conservation and increased food production. Brazilian environmental protection policies include the implantation of Protected Areas (Full Protection Units and Sustainable Use Units) and the adoption of the National Forest Act (Permanent Preservation Areas and Legal Reserves). In this context, we delimited illegal land-use in Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs) adopting the intersection between land-use/land-cover data from PRISM/ALOS image classification for the years 2007–2010 and PPA vectors. We performed the temporal analysis in PAs considering land-use/land-cover data from Landsat TM image classification for the years 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2011. Finally, we performed a Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) to evaluate whether PPAs alone are sufficient as structural corridors. Hypothetical scenarios were simulated to increase the potential of PPAs as structural corridors. The calculation of MSPA attributes was conducted considering 3 edge widths: 15 m (1 pixel), 510 m (34 pixels), and 1005 m (67 pixels). Four scenarios were simulated, considering a gradual increase in preserved areas. The results show that illegal land use is contained within PPA and protected areas. The scenario simulations present alternatives to increase the connectivity of the fragments and ensure the maintenance of ecological and hydrological services. Rapid agricultural expansion without proper landscape planning can compromise the sustainability of ecosystem services and the recharge zone of the Urucuia aquifer.     

Can carbon-trading schemes help to protect China's most diverse forest ecosystems? A case study from Xishuangbanna,Yunnan

Xishuangbanna has been largely transformed from biodiverse natural forests and mixed-use farms into monoculture rubber plantations in just twenty years. This conversion has expanded into forests previously protected by the community and onto marginal sites at high-elevation. Market-based ecosystem payments, especially carbon financing, are potential tools to prevent further forest loss in China. Here, we compare rubber net present value (NPV), carbon sequestration, and seed-plant species diversity for Xishuangbanna given three land-use scenarios: Business-As-Usual (BAU), Economic Oriented Scenario (EOS) and Conservation Oriented Scenario (COS) using a previously published spatial map of rubber profitability. The EOS achieved the greatest rubber profit but caused substantial reductions in natural forest area, biodiversity and carbon stocks. The EOS also requires substantial immigration of workers into a remote and ecologically important region with little social infrastructure for basic security, food security, health-care and education, causing frequently ignored costs. As expected, the COS will maintain the highest levels of natural forest area, sequester 57% more carbon, and 71% more biodiversity than EOS. Given the conservation value of the carbon stores and rich biodiversity residing in Xishuangbanna's natural forests, reducing rubber NPV only marginally would probably cost less than attempting to recover these resources. We recommend that rubber plantations be limited to established, productive lowland areas whilst protecting intact high-elevation forest and reforesting low-productivity plantations. These actions will enhance carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. Management policies focused solely on profits, like the EOS scenario, will fail to sustain the entire range of natural resources and ecosystem services. The prices in the carbon market would have to be considerably larger than they are currently to compete with the profitability of rubber.     

Landscape patterns of development under two alternative scenarios: Implications for conservation

The spatial pattern of urban development has important ecological and conservation implications. Urban sprawl, characterized by scattered and low-density urban development, is commonly criticized for its negative ecological impact. In response, growth management policies have been proposed in order to promote compact development, which is generally considered more favorable from an ecological perspective. Spatial simulations of land cover change are useful for comparing urban development scenarios and their potential effects. One aspect that has not received much attention is how the rate of development may affect differences between compact development and urban sprawl in terms of their potential impact to biodiversity conservation at the landscape scale. Our goal in this study was to compare the spatial pattern and landscape-scale conservation and ecological implications of sprawling development (expected under unregulated development) versus compact development (promoted by growth management policies) at different development rates. We focused on Israel's Mediterranean region—a region characterized by high human population density and heterogeneous land cover. Using a cellular automata model, DINAMICA-EGO, we calibrated and validated an urban development model for the period between 1998 and 2007. Using this period as a reference, we simulated two scenarios 20 years into the future: unregulated (resulting in a more sprawling development pattern) versus regulated development (resulting in a more compact development pattern). For each scenario we analyzed a range of development rates, and compared built-up area patterns, and several landscape-level attributes of natural habitats, conservation priority areas, and protected areas. We found that at development rates comparable to those observed during 1998–2007, there was no major difference between the two scenarios. At higher development rates, some differences between the scenarios emerged: natural core areas were more fragmented and smaller in their extent, and a higher proportion of conservation priority areas were expected to undergo development in the unregulated scenario. Overall, the regulated scenario was more favorable for conservation. Since the regulated and unregulated scenarios exhibited only minor differences in lower development rates, modifications to policy measures included in the regulated scenario should be considered in order improve its effectiveness.     

Knowing but not knowing: Systematic conservation planning and community conservation in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca,Mexico

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) seeks to propose new reserves through a scientifically rigorous process using databases and research selection algorithims. However, SCP exercises have been criticized for “knowing but not doing”, i.e. not implementing the proposed reserve. But there is an additional problem that can be called “knowing but not knowing”, knowing things from databases, but not knowing crucial contextual information about community-based social processes that have supported the high forest cover and biodiversity detected. Examined here is how a common property region of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico has maintained high forest cover in the absence of public protected areas, while multiple SCP exercises have advocated for the creation of public protected areas in communal tropical montane cloud forests and pine forests as strategies for biodiversity conservation and resilience to climate change. Methods included archival research, review of community documents, focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, land use transects, and GIS analysis and remote sensing. Conservation in the region originally occurred because of low population densities, steep slopes and a lack of agricultural subsidies, supported by locally adapted agricultural practices. In the 1990s, a transition from passive to active conservation took place with land use zoning plans, community conservation rules, community forestry enterprises and payments for environmental service programs that consolidated a trend towards high, unthreatened forest cover. Today, the study communities have an average of 88.3% forest cover, with 61% of that in informal conservation based on community land use zoning and rules and another 14% governed by forest management plans approved by the Mexican government. We argue that truly systematic conservation plans would seek to understand how communities in the region are already managing forests for conservation. It is pointless and uninformed to advocate for top-down conservation interventions of forests that are already robustly conserved and resilient to climate change due to community action.     

Brazilian policy and agribusiness damage the Amazon rainforest

Since his inauguration on January 1, 2019, Jair Bolsonaro, a declared right-wing candidate nicknamed “Tropical Trump,” has introduced measures to reduce environmental restrictions on livestock farming, the main greenhouse gas (GHG) producing sector in Brazil that is responsible for most of the deforestation in the country. This dangerous relationship between politics and livestock farming in Brazil is detrimental to environmental conservation. Politicians are introducing measures that facilitate the expansion of this type of farming, which in turn provides inputs for the food industry, i.e. agribusiness, which in turn finances politics, thus producing a dangerous cycle in forest conservation.     

The Economic Growth Impacts of Sugarcane Expansion in Brazil: An Inter‐regional Analysis

Since 2001, Brazil has experienced a sharp increase in sugarcane production due to the upsurge in demand for sugar and ethanol, two products derived from sugarcane. This study analyses the impacts of these sugarcane expansions on economic growth. The effects are examined at the municipality level in Brazil as a whole and in the main sugarcane producing regions, the North‐Northeast (NE) and the Centre‐South (CS). In this latter region, an additional distinction is made between the state of São Paulo (SP) and the Centre‐South region excluding São Paulo (CSex) since the bulk of the recent expansion took place in SP while most of the future expansions are planned in CSex. Estimators based on the propensity score are used to construct two types of counterfactual scenarios. The estimations in the first scenario show that municipalities in NE and CSex that expanded sugarcane production experienced economic growth as a result. No significant effect was found in SP. The second scenario focuses on CSex and establishes that sugarcane non‐expanding municipalities in this region would have had higher economic growth if they had increased sugarcane production. The results of this study suggest that future sugarcane plantations should indeed be located in CSex because they contribute to economic growth.     

A systems approach to forecast agricultural land transformation and soil environmental risk from economic,policy, and cultural scenarios in the north central United States (2012–2062)

Grassland conversion to row-crop production in the north central United States has been a growing threat to socio-economic and environmental sustainability for producers, conservationists, and policy-makers alike. We used a system dynamics model of the region to forecast agriculturally driven land transformation through mid-twenty-first century. The base-case scenario projection showed that farmland area continued to increase, from under 200,000?km² to over 230,000?km². Unmitigated, the soil environmental risk (SER) of such changes reached conservative estimates of Dust Bowl-era externalities. Systems analyses show that reducing livestock production costs, doubling conservation compliance requirements, and livestock–cropping integration had the largest impact on grassland conservation and mitigating SER. The largest SER effects came from eliminating conservation incentives or raising cultivation incentives, despite improvements in reduced tillage and enhanced agronomy. Several system archetypes were identified within the policy scenarios: ‘fixes that backfire’ and ‘success-to-the-successful’. For scenarios creating favourable impacts, time delays caused some behaviours to worsen before positive gains were realized. If implemented, patience and persistence to ensure that these scenarios reach their full potential will be necessary. Our scenarios provide quantitative forecasts around measures for sustainable intensification. These projections can aid regional stakeholders in enhancing discussions currently taking place about sustainable agriculture in the region.     

基于土地利用功能最大化的多情景土地利用优化研究

目的 基于土地利用功能价值最大化对自然发展情景、农业生产功能优先情景、经济发展功能优先情景及生态保育功能优先情景下的土地利用结构及布局进行优化,得到2026年保定市土地利用合理结构与布局。方法 文章利用MOP模型优化各情景土地利用结构、FLUS模型优化各情景土地利用空间布局、耦合协调模型分析各情景功能协调性。结果 各情景下草地面积都减少,建设用地及水域面积都增长。除农业生产功能优先情景外,耕地面积都呈下降趋势。经济发展功能优先情景土地利用功能总价值最高,农业生产功能优先情景最低;各情景下建设用地都以外延式增长;林地都以外延式及填充式在山地丘陵地区扩张;农业生产功能优先、经济发展功能优先及生态保育功能优先情景的土地利用结构耦合协调度高于自然发展情景,经济发展功能优先情景下功能间关系最协调。结论 在现行土地利用变化趋势下,未来保定市土地利用功能将严重失调,需严格落实耕地及生态用地保护政策、推动建设用地高效利用,实现土地利用功能协调及价值最大化。     

Reconciliation ecology in practice: Legal and policy considerations when implementing temporary nature on undeveloped lands in the European Union

Strict regulations, such as the EU Nature Directives, remain pivotal for halting the downward spiral for some protected species. In recent years, though, it has become clear that nature protection rules, are also generating perverse incentives, especially when rigidly applied to areas that have already been transformed by human use, such as agricultural land, quarries and port sites. With the arrival of novel incentive concepts, such as temporary nature in several EU Member States, an unprecedented window of opportunity exists to reframe current nature protection rules. Temporary nature fosters private landowners, ranchers and project developers to actively participate in the recovery of endangered species, also in urban and industrial environments. In return for allowing nature to develop on their undeveloped and vacant lands, the project developers are provided with the legal guarantee that they can still subsequently develop their lands at a later stage. These newly founded conservation policies, which are increasingly endorsed by stand out as striking illustrations of the recently emerged branch of reconciliation ecology, since they aim at increasing biodiversity by opting for win-win scenarios in human-dominated landscapes. It is concluded that a more reconciliatory approach towards nature conservation, which goes beyond the ambit of protected areas, can serve as a catalyst for biodiversity recovery across the wider landscape. Further research will need to underpin whether the ambitious presumptions with regard to these well-intentioned and innovative approaches to nature conservation are justified.     

The future of food demand: understanding differences in global economic models

Understanding the capacity of agricultural systems to feed the world population under climate change requires projecting future food demand. This article reviews demand modeling approaches from 10 global economic models participating in the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). We compare food demand projections in 2050 for various regions and agricultural products under harmonized scenarios of socioeconomic development, climate change, and bioenergy expansion. In the reference scenario (SSP2), food demand increases by 59–98% between 2005 and 2050, slightly higher than the most recent FAO projection of 54% from 2005/2007. The range of results is large, in particular for animal calories (between 61% and 144%), caused by differences in demand systems specifications, and in income and price elasticities. The results are more sensitive to socioeconomic assumptions than to climate change or bioenergy scenarios. When considering a world with higher population and lower economic growth (SSP3), consumption per capita drops on average by 9% for crops and 18% for livestock. The maximum effect of climate change on calorie availability is ?6% at the global level, and the effect of biofuel production on calorie availability is even smaller.     

Urban agriculture could provide 15% of food supply to Sydney,Australia, under expanded land use scenarios

Urban agriculture (UA) can be highly productive in terms of yield per unit area, however productivity is limited by available land and high input requirements. We determined how much of the food supply of Sydney, Australia, could be produced through UA by synthesising yield data from 13 UA gardens with information on labour and key material inputs and using spatial analyses to assess available land area. We modelled three scenarios with varying proportions of available land used for food production; 25 %, 50 % or 75 % of domestic yard space along with street verges and unused land (e.g. vacant lots). Around 15 % of Sydney’s total food supply, or its entire vegetable supply, could be produced through UA under the low range scenario, increasing to 34 % under the highest land use scenario. Under the low range scenario, all necessary irrigation water and organic soil amendments could be obtained from local waste streams, though these sources were insufficient to meet the needs of higher range scenarios. Available labour was a limiting factor in all scenarios, with the entire population being insufficient to meet labour needs required to maintain food production under efficiency and labour investment regimes typical of amateur urban gardeners. Establishing a professionalised UA workforce with greater labour efficiency would be required for managing the available land, however this scenario would likely require changes in public attitudes towards use of private land. These social issues, rather than physical limitations, may be the biggest factors preventing cities like Sydney from obtaining a non-trivial proportion of their food supply from UA.     

Conservation Payments under Risk: A Stochastic Dominance Approach

Conservation payments can be used to preserve forest and agroforest systems. To explain landowners' land-use decisions and determine appropriate conservation payments, it is necessary to focus on revenue risk. Marginal conditional stochastic dominance rules are used to derive conditions for determining the conservation payments required to guarantee that the environmentally preferred land use dominates. An empirical application to shaded coffee protection in the biologically important Chocó region of West Ecuador shows that conservation payments required for preserving shaded coffee areas are much higher than those calculated under risk-neutral assumptions. Further, the extant distribution of land has strong impacts on the required payments.     

The impact of commodity price and conservation policy scenarios on deforestation and agricultural land use in a frontier area within the Amazon

Deforestation in the Amazon is caused by the complex interplay of different drivers. Price of commodities such as beef and soya, and incoming migration are paramount factors. Construction of new highways is a key aspect, as they enable a growing flow of people and economic activities, provoking an intensification of the conversion of forests into pasture and agricultural areas. The pavement of road BR-163 accelerates the expansion of the agricultural frontier from the state of Mato Grosso to Pará, inside the Amazon. Today, the Brazilian government applies two main kinds of policies to protect the environment. First by establishing conservation units (CUs) that include an array of reserve types from natural areas to indigenous lands, and second by enforcing the Forest Code (FC), a law that limits the occupation and use of forests. Legal reserve requirements for rural properties are 80% in the Amazon rainforest, 35% in the Cerrado shrublands and 20% in other regions. However, the effectiveness of these policies relies on a fragile institutional capacity, which causes a flawed monitoring, law enforcement and control. To assess the impact of effective conservation policies on land use and deforestation by 2020, we used the LUSMAPA model in combination with two scenarios, one that included different commodity price developments and migration rates and one on the assumption of the institutional strength to uphold the conservation policies. A revision of the FC from an average 80% policy target to 60% effective implementation and disregard borders of CUs by allowing 5% deforestation in CUs, that both corresponds to a ‘weak’ governmental enforcement, leads to additional deforestation of 41–57%, depending on the commodity price scenario. The results of the simulations are discussed in the light of recent policy changes in Brazil.     

Assessment of land use and land cover changes and valuation of carbon stocks in the Sergipe semiarid region,Brazil: 1992–2030

The semiarid region in the state of Sergipe, Brazil, approximately 11,000 km², has experienced high deforestation rates in the last decades, which ultimately contribute to global climatic changes. The valuation of ecosystem services of CO₂ sequestration can support definition of environmental policies to decrease deforestation in that region. This study aimed to assess land use and land cover changes in the Sergipe semiarid region between 1992 and 2017 by applying remotely sensed data and technics; simulate the land use and land cover changes between 2017 and 2030 by applying a cellular automaton model, by assuming current land use trends (Business as Usual – BAU) as a reference scenario, and a more conservative scenario (Protected Forest – PF), in which was assumed an effective enforcement of the Brazilian Forest Code established in 2012; simulate the carbon stocks by 2017 assuming the BAU and PF scenarios by 2030, and estimate the Carbon balance between the 2030 and 2017 scenarios; and estimate the economic valuation of carbon emission and sequestration by using the InVEST software. The results showed that agriculture (cropped lands) was main driver of the landscape changes in the study area, which increased 14% by 2017, a net increase of 1494.45 km². The results showed that the total Carbon emissions would reach 736,900 Mg CO₂-eq by assuming the BAU scenario, which would increase the cost of opportunity up to US$ 17.7 million and a social carbon cost varying between US$ 10.3 and US$ 30.2 million. The restoration of the permanent preservation areas could contribute to increase Carbon sequestration up to 481,900 Mg CO₂-eq by 2030, which is equivalent cost of US$ 11.6 million. The natural landscape in the Sergipe semiarid region was strongly affected by deforestation activities occurred between 1992 and 2017. It requires, therefore, effective actions to support and promote restoration of degraded areas. The forested areas within the Sergipe semiarid region were the most affected type of vegetation because of expansion of agricultural fields soil exposures (Exposed Land). Environmental assessments based on scenarios and economic valuations can provide crucial information to support policy and decision makers to improve strategies for environmental management and conservation.