IEHIAS scenarios: example from agriculture
- The text on this page is taken from an equivalent page of the IEHIAS-project.
As part of the EU-funded INTARESE project, which contributed to the development of this Toolbox, a case study was carried out to assess the health effects of agricultural land use change in Greece and England.
For this assessment scenarios were required, describing how land use might change under different policy assumptions in the two case study areas.
Various scenarios have been developed in Europe which might serve this purpose, each focusing on different driving forces (e.g. climate change, land use policy). The Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE3), for example, is an ecological-environmental model that simulates the environmental consequences of human activities worldwide, taking into account the IPCC scenarios. For the agricultural sector of study, the model estimates changes in land use and crop area (e.g. cereals, maize, oil crops and rice) at a 50x50km resolution, up to 2100 at 5 year time slices. A clear advantage of the IMAGE model is the rather comprehensive crop list, which is useful for carrying out a detailed integrated assessment. Nevertheless, its relatively coarse resolution meant that it was not ideal for this assessment.
In Geece, therefore, the assessment built on the scenarios developed as part of the ATEAM (Advanced Terrestrial Ecosystem Analysis and Modelling) project. The primary object of this was to assess the vulnerability (to global climate change) of humans relying on ecosystem services. Land use change projections in Europe are based on socio-economic and climatic scenarios, and are represented as maps at 10’x10’ resolution (ca.16x16 km) for the year 1990 (baseline) and for the years 2020 and 2050.
In England, scenarios were taken from the Regional Impact Simulator (RegIS), developed as part of the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) to simulate the effects of climate and socio-economic change in East Anglia and northwest England. Impacts on rural land use and cropping are available for low and high climate change scenarios, for years 2020 and 2050, at a spatial resolution of 5x5km.
In both areas, assessments were done for a baseline year (2004) and for two future years (2020 and/or 2050). Business-as-usual scenarios were run to estimate potential impacts under current land use conditions, and change scenarios run using the land use projections provided from these sources. Differences between the two gave an estimate of the impacts attributable to the projected land use changes.
References
- Integrated modelling of global environmental change. An overview of IMAGE 2.4. Bouwman ,A.F., Kram T. and Goldewijk K. K, 2006 Bilthoven: Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP).
- Simulating the effects of future climate and socio-economic change in East Anglia and North West England: the RegIS2 project. Summary Report. Holman, I.P., Berry, P.M., Mokrech, M., Richards, J.A., Audsley, E., Harrison, P.A., Rounsevell, M.D.A., Nicholls, R.J., Shackley, S. and Henriques, C. 2007 Oxford: UKCIP.
- Schröter, D. et al. 2004 Advanced Terrestrial Ecosystem Analysis and Modelling (ATEAM). Final report 2004, Section 5 and 6 and Annex 1 to 6, Reporting period: 01.01.2001 30.06.2004, Contract no EVK2-2000-00075. Potsdam: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
