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A protocol for an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized land-use and climate scenarios
2018, Kim, HyeJin, Rosa, Isabel M. D., Alkemade, Rob, Leadley, Paul, Hurtt, George, Popp, Alexander, van Vuuren, Detlef P., Anthoni, Peter, Arneth, Almut, Baisero, Daniele, Caton, Emma, Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca, Chini, Louise, De Palma, Adriana, Di Fulvio, Fulvio, Di Marco, Moreno, Espinoza, Felipe, Ferrier, Simon, Fujimori, Shinichiro, Gonzalez, Ricardo E., Gueguen, Maya, Guerra, Carlos, Harfoot, Mike, Harwood, Thomas D., Hasegawa, Tomoko, Haverd, Vanessa, Havlík, Petr, Hellweg, Stefanie, Hill, Samantha L. L., Hirata, Akiko, Hoskins, Andrew J., Janse, Jan H., Jetz, Walter, Johnson, Justin A., Krause, Andreas, Leclère, David, Martins, Ines S., Matsui, Tetsuya, Merow, Cory, Obersteiner, Michael, Ohashi, Haruka, Poulter, Benjamin, Purvis, Andy, Quesada, Benjamin, Rondinini, Carlo, Schipper, Aafke M., Sharp, Richard, Takahashi, Kiyoshi, Thuiller, Wilfried, Titeux, Nicolas, Visconti, Piero, Ware, Christopher, Wolf, Florian, Pereira, Henrique M.
To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land-use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e., nature's contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)-SSP1xRCP2.6, SSP3xRCP6.0, SSP5xRCP8.6-to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenario selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem services models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modeling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modeling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios.
Biomass production in plantations: Land constraints increase dependency on irrigation water
2018, Jans, Yvonne, Berndes, Göran, Heinke, Jens, Lucht, Wolfgang, Gerten, Dieter
Integrated assessment model scenarios project rising deployment of biomass-using energy systems in climate change mitigation scenarios. But there is concern that bioenergy deployment will increase competition for land and water resources and obstruct objectives such as nature protection, the preservation of carbon-rich ecosystems, and food security. To study the relative importance of water and land availability as biophysical constraints to bioenergy deployment at a global scale, we use a process-detailed, spatially explicit biosphere model to simulate rain-fed and irrigated biomass plantation supply along with the corresponding water consumption for different scenarios concerning availability of land and water resources. We find that global plantation supplies are mainly limited by land availability and only secondarily by freshwater availability. As a theoretical upper limit, if all suitable lands on Earth, besides land currently used in agriculture, were available for bioenergy plantations (“Food first” scenario), total plantation supply would be in the range 2,010–2,300 EJ/year depending on water availability and use. Excluding all currently protected areas reduces the supply by 60%. Excluding also areas where conversion to biomass plantations causes carbon emissions that might be considered unacceptably high will reduce the total plantation supply further. For example, excluding all areas where soil and vegetation carbon stocks exceed 150 tC/ha (“Carbon threshold savanna” scenario) reduces the supply to 170–290 EJ/year. With decreasing land availability, the amount of water available for irrigation becomes vitally important. In the least restrictive land availability scenario (“Food first”), up to 77% of global plantation biomass supply is obtained without additional irrigation. This share is reduced to 31% for the most restrictive “Carbon threshold savanna” scenario. The results highlight the critical—and geographically varying—importance of co-managing land and water resources if substantial contributions of bioenergy are to be reached in mitigation portfolios.