Three Scenarios for Land-Use Change: A Case Study in Central Europe

Prieler, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7024-1075, Lesko, A.P., & Anderberg, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7131-7353 (1998). Three Scenarios for Land-Use Change: A Case Study in Central Europe. IIASA Research Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: RR-98-003

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Abstract

The study presented in this paper is part of the Regional Material Balance Approaches to Long-Term Environmental Policy Planning Project at IIASA. This project aims to study the flow of four heavy metals (cadmium, zinc, lead, and arsenic) with particular focus on soils. The combination of load, soil characteristics, land use, and land management, including plant types grown and agrochemical applications, determines the fate of stored heavy metals. Heavy metals may further accumulate in the soil or they may be remobilized and enter the food chain via plant uptake or via groundwater. Land use and land management have an impact on the load of heavy metals because certain agrochemical inputs (phosphate fertilizers, sewage sludge, manure) contain heavy metals as impurities. Certain land-management practices also influence the soil characteristics that determine whether heavy metals accumulate or are available in their mobile form.

Three land-use scenarios have been developed to help assess possible effects of accumulated heavy-metal pollution in the region.

This paper describes these three scenarios, which were constructed for the period 1995-2050. Section 2 presents the factors that influence land-use development and describes historical land-use changes in Europe and the countries of the project area. Developments in the agricultural sector, which are considered to be of particular importance for land-use changes in the European context, are discussed in Section 3. The discussion includes recent developments in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany, but also trends in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) and possible impacts of global agricultural markets on European agriculture. Section 4 presents a general introduction to scenario construction; introduces the goals and key questions for the three scenarios constructed for the project area of this study; and presents, discusses, and compares the three scenarios. Conclusions are presented in Section 5.

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