Bioenergy and land use: a spatial-agent dynamic model of energy crop production in Illinois

Scheffran, Juergen; BenDor, Todd K.

doi:10.1504/ijep.2009.027140

Cited by 60 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Bush et al [114] and Sheehan [115] explore the potential market penetration scenarios for bio-fuels in the United States. Scheffran and BenDor [116] investigate interaction between economic conditions and land competition between different crops. Franco et al [117] use SD to understand the difficulties in fulfilling government requirements for biofuels blending and to evaluate the effect of different government policies in the production of ethanol and biodiesel.…”

Section: System Dynamics (Sd)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing Integrated Systems Modelling Framework for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

2011

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Abstract:The need for integrated methodological framework for sustainability assessment has been widely discussed and is urgent due to increasingly complex environmental system problems. These problems have impacts on ecosystems and human well-being which represent a threat to economic performance of countries and corporations. Integrated assessment crosses issues; spans spatial and temporal scales; looks forward and backward; and incorporates multi-stakeholder inputs. This study aims to develop an integrated methodology by capitalizing the complementary strengths of different methods used by industrial ecologists and biophysical economists. The computational methodology proposed here is systems perspective, integrative, and holistic approach for sustainability assessment which attempts to link basic science and technology to policy formulation. The framework adopts life cycle thinking methods-LCA, LCC, and SLCA; stakeholders analysis supported by multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA); and dynamic system modelling. Following Pareto principle, the critical sustainability criteria, indicators and metrics (i.e., hotspots) can be identified and further modelled using system dynamics or agent based modelling and improved by data envelopment analysis (DEA) and sustainability network theory (SNT). The framework is being applied to development of biofuel supply chain networks. The framework can provide new ways of integrating knowledge across the divides between social and natural sciences as well as between critical and problem-solving research. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2011, 3 470

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Section: System Dynamics (Sd)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing Integrated Systems Modelling Framework for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

2011

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“…Veron et al, 2015;Scheffran and BenDor, 2009;Lobell et al, 2007Lobell et al, , 2006. Therefore we focus here on climatological values as well, by considering annual means of temperature and precipitation.…”

Section: T Brücher Et Al: Implications Of Land Use Change In Tropicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of land use change in tropical northern Africa under global warming

2015

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Abstract.A major link between climate and humans in tropical northern Africa, and the Sahel in particular, is land use and associated land cover change, mainly where subsistence farming prevails. Here we assess possible feedbacks between the type of land use and harvest intensity and climate by analysing a series of idealized GCM experiments using the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM). The baseline for these experiments is a simulation forced by the RCP8.5 (radiation concentration pathway) scenario, which includes strong greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic land cover changes. The anthropogenic land cover changes in the RCP8.5 scenario include a mixture of pasture and agriculture. In subsequent simulations, we replace the entire area affected by anthropogenic land cover change in the region between the Sahara in the north and the Guinean Coast in the south (4 to 20 • N) with either pasture or agriculture. In a second set-up we vary the amount of harvest in the case of agriculture. The RCP8.5 baseline simulation reveals strong changes in the area mean agriculture and monsoon rainfall. In comparison with these changes, any variation of the type of land use in the study area leads to very small, mostly insignificantly small, additional differences in mean temperature and annual precipitation change in this region. These findings are only based on the specific set-up of our experiments, which only focuses on variations in the kind of land use, and not the increase in land use, over the 21st century, nor whether land use is considered at all. Within the uncertainty of the representation of land use in current ESMs, our study suggests marginal feedback between land use changes and climate changes triggered by strong greenhouse gas emissions. Hence as a good approximation, climate can be considered as an external forcing: models investigating land-use-conflict dynamics can run offline by prescribing seasonal or mean values of climate as a boundary condition for climate.

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“…In Midwestern agricultural landscapes, ABM has been applied in studies on how farmer decision making is impacted by agricultural policies, such as the CRP [23], potential market scenarios of biofuel crops [24], and price incentives for nitrogen and carbon abatement [25,26]. In the first two studies [23,24], the research is focused on how land use changes emerge from farmers' decisions under the assumption that the natural environment is static through time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the first two studies [23,24], the research is focused on how land use changes emerge from farmers' decisions under the assumption that the natural environment is static through time. In the latter two studies [25,26], the focus is on the impacts of farmers' management decisions on water quality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Impacts of Alternative Crop Market Scenarios on Land Use Change with an Agent-Based Model

Ding

Bennett

Secchi

2015

Land

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Abstract:We developed an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate farmers' decisions on crop type and fertilizer application in response to commodity and biofuel crop prices. Farm profit maximization constrained by farmers' profit expectations for land committed to biofuel crop production was used as the decision rule. Empirical parameters characterizing farmers' profit expectations were derived from an agricultural landowners and operators survey and integrated in the ABM. The integration of crop production cost models and the survey information in the ABM is critical to producing simulations that can provide realistic insights into agricultural land use planning and policy making. Model simulations were run with historical market prices and alternative market scenarios for corn price, soybean to corn price ratio, switchgrass price, and switchgrass to corn stover ratio. The results of the comparison between simulated cropland percentage and crop rotations with satellite-based land cover data suggest that farmers may be underestimating the effects that continuous corn production has on yields. The simulation results for alternative market scenarios based on a survey of agricultural land owners and operators in the Clear Creek Watershed in eastern Iowa show that farmers see cellulosic biofuel feedstock production in the form of perennial grasses or corn stover as a more risky enterprise than their current crop production systems, likely because of market and production risks and lock in effects. As a result farmers do not follow a simple farm-profit maximization rule. OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 1111 Keywords: agent-based model; land use change; agricultural land owners and operators survey; commodity and biofuel crop market scenarios

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Bioenergy and land use: a spatial-agent dynamic model of energy crop production in Illinois

Cited by 60 publications

References 18 publications

Advancing Integrated Systems Modelling Framework for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Advancing Integrated Systems Modelling Framework for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Implications of land use change in tropical northern Africa under global warming

Investigating Impacts of Alternative Crop Market Scenarios on Land Use Change with an Agent-Based Model

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