Global change effects on land management in the Mediterranean region

Žiga Malek*, Peter H. Verburg, Ilse R Geijzendorffer, Alberte Bondeau, Wolfgang Cramer

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

The Mediterranean region faces significant challenges to supply its growing population with food and living space. The region's potential to do so in the future is even more uncertain in the light of global change effects. Climate change will impact water availability in the region, which is already limited and often used at unsustainable rates. To investigate the effects of global change and explore alternative development pathways of Mediterranean land use, we simulated two future scenarios with different land, water and biodiversity management transitions. We adopted a land systems approach, where land use and land cover are combined with data on land management, irrigation and livestock density, taking into account the characteristics of Mediterranean multifunctional landscapes, specific agricultural products, such as permanent crops, and irrigation water demands. Future land system changes were explored using the CLUMondo model for different development pathways of the region. We constrained the withdrawal of irrigation water based on existing freshwater resources. In a ‘growth’ scenario, we simulated a hypothetical future without consideration of environmental constraints and where food production and urban expansion are main priorities. The ‘sustainability’ scenario represents a future where limited water resources are extracted in a sustainable way and where areas of high biodiversity value are protected. The growth scenario projected significant intensification of land management, and loss of agro-silvo-pastoral mosaic systems. To achieve this, we calculate that the region would need to increase water withdrawal for irrigation significantly, resulting in increased pressure on freshwater resources. The sustainability scenario presents a way of increasing food production and at the same time improving the state of water resources, wetlands and traditional landscapes. Achieving this future would require improvements of yields of rain-fed systems and efficiencies of irrigated systems. The results indicate that coordinated environmental policy together with appropriate market access are needed to steer the regions land management towards a more sustainable future while ensuring food production.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)238-254
Number of pages17
JournalGlobal Environmental Change
Volume50
Early online date21 Apr 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2018

Funding

The research in this paper has been supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme project LUC4C (Grant No. 603542 ), OPERAs (Grant No. 308393 ) and ERC grant GLOLAND (no. 311819 ). This paper contributes to the objectives of the Global Land Project ( http://glp.earth/ ) and to the objectives of the Labex OTMed (no. ANR-11-LABX-0061) funded by the French Government Investissements d’Avenir program of the French National Research Agency (ANR) through the A*MIDEX project (no. ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02 ). Appendix A

FundersFunder number
European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme project LUC4CLUC4C
French Government Investissements
Seventh Framework Programme308393, 603542, 311819
European Research CouncilANR-11-LABX-0061
Agence Nationale de la Recherche

    Keywords

    • Cropland expansion
    • Cropland intensification
    • Irrigation
    • Land-change model
    • Multifunctionality

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