Global land-use allocation model linked to an integrated assessment model.

Area of Science:

• Environmental modeling
• Earth system science
• Integrated assessment modeling

Background:

• Integrated assessment models (IAMs) often provide land-use projections at coarse spatial resolutions.
• Accurate spatial land-use data is crucial for global environmental assessments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and verify a global land-use allocation model for downscaling IAM outputs.
• To assess the impact of land-use downscaling on carbon emission estimates.

Main Methods:

• Developed a global land-use allocation model.
• Performed downscaling of regional aggregated land-use projections from IAMs.
• Analyzed the influence of downscaling on land-use carbon emission estimates.

Main Results:

• The downscaling technique was verified, providing a spatial land-use distribution.
• Downscaled land-use data improved the capture of spatial carbon stock density.
• Regional heterogeneity of carbon emissions from land expansion was better represented.

Conclusions:

• The developed land-use allocation model effectively downscales IAM projections.
• Downscaling enhances the accuracy of global environmental assessments by providing finer spatial resolution.
• This method offers improved insights into land-use impacts on carbon emissions and ecosystem services.