Future land system scenarios for the Mediterranean

DOI

The Mediterranean region faces significant challenges to supply its growing population with food and living space. The region’s potential to do so in the future is even more uncertain in the light of global change effects, particularly climate and socio-economic change. Until know, it was unknown how land use and land management can respond to such global challenges. We present a set of scenarios on potential future changes to Mediterranean land systems. First, we present two different pathways in fulfilling the growing demand for crops, livestock and urban space. One is oriented towards growth, without any restrictions in terms of limiting the withdrawal of water for irrigation or expansion of protected areas. The second presents a future, where consumption of water for irrigation is reduced, and the network of protected areas is significantly expanded. The second set of scenarios presents how land use and land management might respond to different levels of reduced water losses in the irrigation systems. Irrigated cropland in the region is characterized by different levels of efficiency. In the study we show, that significant reductions of water losses is necessary in order to increase crop production in the region.

The maps present the spatial distribution of Mediterranean land systems today and in the future (2050), and can be imported in a GIS. The maps are created in a Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection with a resolution of 2 x 2 km (custom projection with more details in the file "readme_projection").

We used the CLUMondo spatial allocation model in both studies. We present a novel approach, where we limit cropland intensification based on accessible water resources. Moreover, we studied what would decreases in water resources due to climate change mean to land use and land management. More information on the model in the publications and on www.environmentalgeography.nl

The resulting scenarios can be used numerous ways:

Evaluating different strategies to improve cropland productivity and increase crop production (implementing irrigation, improving irrigation efficiency, cropland intensification, crop type specialization, changes to multifunctionality…) Studying changes to Mediterranean terrestrial biodiversity and landscapes Identifying areas with different priorities: crop production, livestock grazing, biodiversity protection…

ESRI ArcGIS, 10.4

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/YOENW4
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.04.007
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-017-9761-0
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/YOENW4
Provenance
Creator Malek, Ziga ORCID logo; Verburg, Peter H ORCID logo; Geijzendorffer, Ilse R ORCID logo; Bondeau, Alberte ORCID logo; Cramer, Wolfgang ORCID logo
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor Malek, Ziga
Publication Year 2019
Funding Reference EU FP7, 603542; EU FP7, 308393; ERC, 311819; French National Research Agency (ANR), ANR 11 IDEX 0001 02
Rights CC0 Waiver; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact Malek, Ziga (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Representation
Resource Type geospatial; Dataset
Format image/tiff; application/octet-stream; text/plain
Size 2887882; 11537898; 470356; 468968; 467796; 467444; 471050; 458380; 469436; 469718; 9728; 380; 335; 1937
Version 1.0
Discipline Agricultural Sciences; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Earth and Environmental Science; Environmental Research; Geosciences; Land Use; Life Sciences; Natural Sciences
Spatial Coverage Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Aix-en-Provence, France