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Mats Lindeskog

Postdoctoral fellow

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Assessing the impact of changes in land-use intensity and climate on simulated trade-offs between crop yield and nitrogen leaching

Author

  • Jan Hendrik Blanke
  • Stefan Olin
  • Julia Stürck
  • Ullrika Sahlin
  • Mats Lindeskog
  • John Helming
  • Veiko Lehsten

Summary, in English

In this study, a global vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS) is forced with spatial information (Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) 2 level) of land-use intensity change in the form of nitrogen (N) fertilization derived from a model chain which informed the Common Agricultural Policy Regionalized Impact (CAPRI) model. We analysed the combined role of climate change and land-use intensity change for trade-offs between agricultural yield and N leaching in the European Union under two plausible scenarios up until 2040. Furthermore, we assessed both driver importance and uncertainty in future trends based on an alternative land-use intensity dataset derived from an integrated assessment model. LPJ-GUESS simulated an increase in wheat and maize yield but also N leaching for most regions when driven by changes in land-use intensity and climate under RCP 8.5. Under RCP 4.5, N leaching is reduced in 53% of the regions while there is a trade-off in crop productivity. The most important factors influencing yield were CO2 (wheat) and climate (maize), but N application almost equaled these in importance. For N leaching, N application was the most important factor, followed by climate. Therefore, using a constant N application dataset in the absence of future projections has a substantial effect on simulated ecosystem responses, especially for maize yield and N leaching. This study is a first assessment of future N leaching and yield responses based on projections of climate and land-use intensity. It further highlights the importance of accounting for changes in future N applications and land-use intensity in general when evaluating environmental impacts over long time periods.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2017-02-15

Language

English

Pages

385-398

Publication/Series

Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment

Volume

239

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use

Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Fertilization
  • Land-use intensity projections
  • LPJ-GUESS
  • Nitrogen leaching
  • Trade-offs

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0167-8809