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Mapping Agricultural Land Use Change in the US: Biofuel scenarios from 2000-2030
Tristram
O.
West, Joint Global Change Research Institute, tristram.west@pnnl.gov
(Presenter)
Uniform methods for land use assessment from local to continental scales are important for supporting national policies that focus on local management. In an effort to bridge local and national scales, we have been conducting land-use change research for the continental U.S. and doing so using 56-m resolution land use data. We have recently completed five scenarios of agricultural land-use change that represent a range of plausible biomass feedstock production. The scenarios include meeting targets of the Energy Independence and Security Act; alternative scenarios of only corn grain ethanol versus only cellulosic ethanol production; and alternative scenarios of no ethanol production with current agricultural program incentives versus no ethanol production with no monetary incentives for agricultural practices. These scenarios have implications for carbon cycling, GHG emissions, soil erosion, water quality, and other environmental variables. These scenarios also represent relevant policy issues that are currently being debated. We will present methods used to estimate future land-use change that include use of the USDA Cropland Data Layer, the POLYSYS agricultural economic model, and the Land Use Carbon Allocation model. We will present results that include spatially-explicit changes in crop rotations associated with the aforementioned biofuel scenarios. Results will consist of acreage changes per crop and the expected geographic location of these changes for years 2000-2030. Gridded datasets of land use change will be made available, when completed, for use by the research and policy communities. Presentation Type: Poster Session: Science in Support of Decision Making (Wed 10:00 AM) Associated Project(s):
Poster Location ID: 259
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