1.4 Land Change Modeling for Global Environmental
Changes
The use and integration of models will lead to a comprehensive understanding of
the complexity of the coupled human-environmental systems (i.e., synthesis and
assessment issues). In the context of global environmental change and sustainability
science, increasing concerns are given to research on sustainability that can inform
practice and decision making in planning and management domains. The development of the next generation of LCMs needs to take these concerns into consideration towards an integrated research framework for land change and earth system
studies. In this section, we review four research articles that illustrate the progress
of coupling land change modeling with other environmental analysis and modeling
techniques for studying the interactions between land change and other components
of global environmental changes, such as climate change, hydrological processes,
soil degradation, and biodiversity loss.
Kerr et al. (2003) described an integrated process-based modeling approach that
couples ecological modeling of Carbon dynamics with economic modeling of land
use for the prediction of land use and Carbon storage. This integrated model
contains three components to simulate the interactions and feedbacks between
ecosystems and human land-use activities. The ecological model and economic
model were coupled through the land manager’s choice of land use at each time
step. The complex interactions were then realized through the exchange of individual model outputs as endogenous variables that will affect the next step of simulation. For example, the ecological model provides inputs to the land use choice
model through estimates of biomass productivity. The key outputs from the integrated model include both land use and Carbon stocks.
Lin et al. (2007) developed an approach for modeling the impacts of future land
use and climate changes on hydrological process through integrating the CLUE-S
model (Verburg et al. 2002) and the generalized watershed loading functions model
(Haith and Shoemaker 1987). The structure of the CLUE-S model was described
earlier in Sect. 1.2.1. The hydrological model is a combined distributed/lumped
parameter watershed model that simulates runoff, sediment, and nutrient loadings
in a watershed using variable sized source areas of different land use/cover types.
The simulated land use/cover types have different coefficient values that are used to
determine the evapotranspiration in the hydrological model. Moreover, climate
change scenarios generated from general circulation models (GCM) simulations
have also been included to examine the impacts of climate change on the hydrological cycle.
Van Rompaey et al. (2002) loosely coupled land use change model with soil
erosion model to predict future soil degradation and its on-site and off-site consequences. They firstly applied stochastic simulations to simulate future land changes
based on the calculated afforestation and deforestation probabilities from historical
land use maps. Then a spatially distributed soil erosion/sediment delivery model,
SEDEM, was used to quantify the effects of afforestation or deforestation on soil
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T. Liu and X. Yang
Changes
The use and integration of models will lead to a comprehensive understanding of
the complexity of the coupled human-environmental systems (i.e., synthesis and
assessment issues). In the context of global environmental change and sustainability
science, increasing concerns are given to research on sustainability that can inform
practice and decision making in planning and management domains. The development of the next generation of LCMs needs to take these concerns into consideration towards an integrated research framework for land change and earth system
studies. In this section, we review four research articles that illustrate the progress
of coupling land change modeling with other environmental analysis and modeling
techniques for studying the interactions between land change and other components
of global environmental changes, such as climate change, hydrological processes,
soil degradation, and biodiversity loss.
Kerr et al. (2003) described an integrated process-based modeling approach that
couples ecological modeling of Carbon dynamics with economic modeling of land
use for the prediction of land use and Carbon storage. This integrated model
contains three components to simulate the interactions and feedbacks between
ecosystems and human land-use activities. The ecological model and economic
model were coupled through the land manager’s choice of land use at each time
step. The complex interactions were then realized through the exchange of individual model outputs as endogenous variables that will affect the next step of simulation. For example, the ecological model provides inputs to the land use choice
model through estimates of biomass productivity. The key outputs from the integrated model include both land use and Carbon stocks.
Lin et al. (2007) developed an approach for modeling the impacts of future land
use and climate changes on hydrological process through integrating the CLUE-S
model (Verburg et al. 2002) and the generalized watershed loading functions model
(Haith and Shoemaker 1987). The structure of the CLUE-S model was described
earlier in Sect. 1.2.1. The hydrological model is a combined distributed/lumped
parameter watershed model that simulates runoff, sediment, and nutrient loadings
in a watershed using variable sized source areas of different land use/cover types.
The simulated land use/cover types have different coefficient values that are used to
determine the evapotranspiration in the hydrological model. Moreover, climate
change scenarios generated from general circulation models (GCM) simulations
have also been included to examine the impacts of climate change on the hydrological cycle.
Van Rompaey et al. (2002) loosely coupled land use change model with soil
erosion model to predict future soil degradation and its on-site and off-site consequences. They firstly applied stochastic simulations to simulate future land changes
based on the calculated afforestation and deforestation probabilities from historical
land use maps. Then a spatially distributed soil erosion/sediment delivery model,
SEDEM, was used to quantify the effects of afforestation or deforestation on soil
12
T. Liu and X. Yang