Looking at the Big Picture: The Importance of Landbase Interactions Among Forests, Agriculture, and Climate Mitigation Policies

Land use change is a key part of global change. Deforestation, urban sprawl, agriculture, and other human influences have substantially altered natural ecosystems and fragmented the global landscape. Slowing down deforestation and afforesting environmentally sensitive agricultural land are important steps for mitigating climate change. Because no policy operates in a vacuum, however, it’s important to consider how separate climate mitigation policies might interact with each other. Ralph Alig, a scientist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station, and his colleagues evaluated the potential impacts of policy instruments available for climate change mitigation. By using the Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization Greenhouse Gases model, the researchers analyzed how land might shift between forestry and agriculture and to more developed uses depending on different land use policies and several carbon pricing scenarios. They also examined the likely effects on timber, crop prices, and bioenergy production if landowners were paid to sequester carbon on their land. The researchers found that projected competition for raw materials is greatest in the short term, over the first 25 years of the 50-year projections. Climate change is occurring within a matrix of other changes. By 2050, an additional 3 billion people are expected to be living on Earth, needing food, clean water, and places to live. Incentives for landowners to maintain undeveloped land will be vital to sequestering carbon and providing other services of intact ecosystems