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    Fossil-fueled development (SSP5): An energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2016) Kriegler, Elmar; Bauer, Nico; Popp, Alexander; Humpenöder, Florian; Leimbach, Marian; Strefler, Jessica; Baumstark, Lavinia; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; Hilaire, Jérôme; Klein, David; Mouratiadou, Ioanna; Weindl, Isabelle; Bertram, Christoph; Dietrich, Jan-Philipp; Luderer, Gunnar; Pehl, Michaja; Pietzcker, Robert; Piontek, Franziska; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Biewald, Anne; Bonsch, Markus; Giannousakis, Anastasis; Kreidenweis, Ulrich; Müller, Christoph; Rolinski, Susanne; Schultes, Anselm; Schwanitz, Jana; Stevanovic, Miodrag; Calvin, Katherine; Emmerling, Johannes; Fujimori, Shinichiro; Edenhofer, Ottmar
    This paper presents a set of energy and resource intensive scenarios based on the concept of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). The scenario family is characterized by rapid and fossil-fueled development with high socio-economic challenges to mitigation and low socio-economic challenges to adaptation (SSP5). A special focus is placed on the SSP5 marker scenario developed by the REMIND-MAgPIE integrated assessment modeling framework. The SSP5 baseline scenarios exhibit very high levels of fossil fuel use, up to a doubling of global food demand, and up to a tripling of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the century, marking the upper end of the scenario literature in several dimensions. These scenarios are currently the only SSP scenarios that result in a radiative forcing pathway as high as the highest Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5). This paper further investigates the direct impact of mitigation policies on the SSP5 energy, land and emissions dynamics confirming high socio-economic challenges to mitigation in SSP5. Nonetheless, mitigation policies reaching climate forcing levels as low as in the lowest Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP2.6) are accessible in SSP5. The SSP5 scenarios presented in this paper aim to provide useful reference points for future climate change, climate impact, adaption and mitigation analysis, and broader questions of sustainable development.
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    Characterization of land cover-specific fire regimes in the Brazilian Amazon
    (Heidelberg : Springer, 2022) Cano-Crespo, Ana; Traxl, Dominik; Prat-Ortega, Genís; Rolinski, Susanne; Thonicke, Kirsten
    Humans profoundly alter fire regimes both directly, by introducing changes in fuel dynamics and ignitions, and indirectly, by increasing the release of greenhouse gases and aerosols from fires, which can alter regional climate and, as a consequence, modify fuel moisture and availability. Interactions between vegetation dynamics, regional climate change and anthropogenic pressure lead to high heterogeneity in the spatio-temporal fire distribution. We use the new FireTracks Scientific Dataset that tracks the spatio-temporal development of individual fires to analyse fire regimes in the Brazilian Legal Amazon over the period 2002–2020. We analyse fire size, duration, intensity and rate of spread in six different land-cover classes. Particular combinations of fire features determine the dominant and characteristic fire regime in each of them. We find that fires in savannas and evergreen forests burn the largest areas and are the most long lasting. Forest fires have the potential for burning at the highest intensities, whereas higher rates of spread are found in savannas. Woody savanna and grassland fires are usually affected by smaller, shorter, less-intense fires compared with fires in evergreen forest and savanna. However, fires in grasslands can burn at rates of spread as high as savanna fires as a result of the easily flammable fuel. We observe that fires in deciduous forests and croplands are generally small, short and low intense, although the latter can sustain high rates of spread due to the dry post-harvest residuals. The reconstructed fire regimes for each land cover can be used to improve the simulated fire characteristics by models and, thus, future projections.
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    Dynamics of soil organic carbon in the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan under past and future climate and land use
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg ; New York : Springer, 2021) Rolinski, Susanne; Prishchepov, Alexander V.; Guggenberger, Georg; Bischoff, Norbert; Kurganova, Irina; Schierhorn, Florian; Müller, Daniel; Müller, Christoph
    Changes in land use and climate are the main drivers of change in soil organic matter contents. We investigated the impact of the largest policy-induced land conversion to arable land, the Virgin Lands Campaign (VLC), from 1954 to 1963, of the massive cropland abandonment after 1990 and of climate change on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. We simulated carbon budgets from the pre-VLC period (1900) until 2100 using a dynamic vegetation model to assess the impacts of observed land-use change as well as future climate and land-use change scenarios. The simulations suggest for the entire VLC region (266 million hectares) that the historic cropland expansion resulted in emissions of 1.6⋅ 1015 g (= 1.6 Pg) carbon between 1950 and 1965 compared to 0.6 Pg in a scenario without the expansion. From 1990 to 2100, climate change alone is projected to cause emissions of about 1.8 (± 1.1) Pg carbon. Hypothetical recultivation of the cropland that has been abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union until 2050 may cause emissions of 3.5 (± 0.9) Pg carbon until 2100, whereas the abandonment of all cropland until 2050 would lead to sequestration of 1.8 (± 1.2) Pg carbon. For the climate scenarios based on SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission pathways, SOC declined only moderately for constant land use but substantially with further cropland expansion. The variation of SOC in response to the climate scenarios was smaller than that in response to the land-use scenarios. This suggests that the effects of land-use change on SOC dynamics may become as relevant as those of future climate change in the Eurasian steppes.