Scenarios of land use and land cover change in the conterminous United States: Utilizing the special report on emission scenarios at ecoregional scales

Benjamin M. Sleeter; Terry L. Sohl; Michelle A. Bouchard; Ryan R. Reker; Christopher E. Soulard; William Acevedo; Glenn E. Griffith; Rachel R. Sleeter; Roger F. Auch; Kristi Sayler; Stephen Prisley; Zhi-Liang Zhu

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.03.008

Scenarios of land use and land cover change in the conterminous United States: Utilizing the special report on emission scenarios at ecoregional scales

Global Environmental Change

By: Benjamin M. Sleeter, Terry L. Sohl, Michelle A. Bouchard, Ryan R. Reker, Christopher E. Soulard, William Acevedo, Glenn E. Griffith, Rachel R. Sleeter, Roger F. Auch, Kristi Sayler, Stephen Prisley, and Zhi-Liang Zhu

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.03.008

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Abstract

Global environmental change scenarios have typically provided projections of land use and land cover for a relatively small number of regions or using a relatively coarse resolution spatial grid, and for only a few major sectors. The coarseness of global projections, in both spatial and thematic dimensions, often limits their direct utility at scales useful for environmental management. This paper describes methods to downscale projections of land-use and land-cover change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Emission Scenarios to ecological regions of the conterminous United States, using an integrated assessment model, land-use histories, and expert knowledge. Downscaled projections span a wide range of future potential conditions across sixteen land use/land cover sectors and 84 ecological regions, and are logically consistent with both historical measurements and SRES characteristics. Results appear to provide a credible solution for connecting regionalized projections of land use and land cover with existing downscaled climate scenarios, under a common set of scenario-based socioeconomic assumptions.

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Additional publication details
Publication type	Article
Publication Subtype	Journal Article
Title	Scenarios of land use and land cover change in the conterminous United States: Utilizing the special report on emission scenarios at ecoregional scales
Series title	Global Environmental Change
DOI	10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.03.008
Volume	22
Issue	4
Year Published	2012
Language	English
Publisher	Elsevier
Publisher location	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Contributing office(s)	Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Western Geographic Science Center
Description	19 p.
First page	896
Last page	914
Country	United States
Google Analytic Metrics	Metrics page