Tropes

ScienceDaily_2013 03226.txt

#Global map provides new insights into land usein order to assess the global impacts of land use on the environment and help provide appropriate countermeasures a group of researchers under the leadership of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has created a new world map of land use systems. Based on various indicators of land-use intensity climate environmental and socioeconomic conditions they identified twelve global patterns called land system archetypes. The scientists from UFZ with colleagues from the Humboldt-University Berlin and University Bonn have published recently their results in the journal Global Environmental Change. Land use changes come in various forms: maize fields replace meadows and grasslands tropical forests are cleared for pastures steppes become cropland. The reasons are complex the impacts are immense: animal and plant communities change ecosystem functions disappear carbon emissions contribute to climate change. Whatever happens regionally has global consequences. In order to better assess these impacts and help provide effective countermeasures the researchers from UFZ created a world map that identifies twelve global land-use systems also called archetypes. These include barren lands in the developing world pastoral systems or extensive cropping systems. Germany for instance together with most of the Western europe Eastern USA and Western australia represents the'intensive cropping system'that covers about 5%of the terrestrial Earth surface. This system is characterized by high density of cropland high inputs of nitrogen fertilizers temperate climate high crop yields large capital investments in the agricultural sector low proportion of GDP originating from agriculture and good access to market places. What is novel about this research is the fact that the scientists analyzed significantly more data and indicators than what is common in similar studies. In contrast to traditional models of land use over 30 factors with more than one million data points were processed. For example we didn't know before which regions had unfulfilled an potential for agricultural intensification given the environmental and socioeconomic conditions or in which regions the maximum agricultural yields were achieved already says Tomã¡Å¡VÃ¡clavã k a scientist and leading author from UFZ. The information that was hidden usually behind the complexity of data is revealed now. If we had analyzed only the environmental indicators we could not identify where viable opportunities for yield improvements exist. This new analysis also shows a different picture of land use than scientists had before. China for example belongs to five different archetypes. It was surprising to see that the intensity and type of land use in some regions of China was quite similar to the situation in Western europe or the United states. Thus parts of China together with particular regions of India and of course large areas of Europe were assigned to the'intensive cropping systems'archetype says Tomã¡Å¡VÃ¡clavã k. According to the co-author and the head of the Department of Computational Landscape Ecology at UFZ Leipzig Prof. Ralf Seppelt this representation of land systems is useful also because we can now provide science-based policy recommendations for regions in certain land-use types on how to avoid negative consequences of land use. This can be explained easily with examples from Latin america and Southeast asia: many areas in these regions are classified as'degraded forest/cropland systems in the tropics'characterized by extremely high soil erosion. Because the socioeconomic data show that agriculture plays an important role in the national economy of the local countries it is essential to develop and apply erosion control measures for these regions. Only then the agricultural yields could increase without negatively affecting the environment. In other land systems the situation is quite different. The extensive cropping systems of Eastern europe or India still have a high potential to increase the agricultural yields. Such opportunities however are exhausted largely in the intensive cropping systems of Western europe and the USASTORY Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Helmholtz Centre For Environmental Research-UFZ. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference J

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