The effect of forest owner decision-making, climatic change and societal demands on land-use change and ecosystem service provision in Sweden

Victor Blanco, Sascha Holzhauer, Calum Brown, Fredrik Lagergren, Gregor Vulturius, Mats Lindeskog, Mark D. A. Rounsevell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The uncertain effects of climatic change and changing demands for ecosystem services on the distribution of forests and their levels of service provision require assessments of future land-use change, ecosystem service provision, and how ecosystem service demands may be met. We present CRAFTY-Sweden, an agent-based, land-use model that incorporates land owner behaviour and decision-making in modelling future ecosystem service provision in the Swedish forestry sector. Future changes were simulated under scenarios of socio-economic and climatic change between 2010 and 2100. The simulations indicate that the influence of climatic change (on land productivities) may be less important than that of socio-economic change or behavioural differences. Simulations further demonstrate that the variability in land owner and societal behaviour has a substantial role in determining the direction and impact of land-use change. The results indicate a sizeable increase in timber harvesting in coming decades, which together with a substantial decoupling between supply and demand for forest ecosystem services highlights the challenge of continuously meeting demands for ecosystem services over long periods of time. There is a clear need for model applications of this kind to better understand the variation in ecosystem service provision in the forestry sector, and other associated land-use changes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)174-208
Number of pages35
JournalEcosystem Services
Volume23
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017 Feb 1

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Forest Science
  • Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use

Free keywords

  • Agent-based modelling
  • Behaviour
  • Ecosystem services supply and demand
  • Forestry sector
  • Scenario analysis

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