The expansion of short rotation forestry: characterization of determinants with an agent-based land use model
Authored by Henning Nolzen, Jule Schulze, Hanna Weise, Erik Gawel, Karin Frank
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1111/gcbb.12400
Sponsors:
German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Wood is a limited resource which is exposed to a continuously growing
global demand not least because of a politically fostered bioenergy use.
One approach to master the challenge to sustainably meet this increasing
wood demand is short rotation forestry (SRF). However, SRF is only
gradually evolving and it is not fully understood which determinants
hamper its expansion. This study provides theoretical insights into
economic and environmental determinants of an SRF expansion and their
interplay. This assessment requires the incorporation of farmers'
decision-making based on an explicit investment appraisal. Therefore, we
use an agent-based model to depict the decision-making of
profit-maximizing farmers facing the choice between SRF, the cultivation
of conventional annual agricultural crops and abstaining from
cultivation (fallow land). The land use decisions are influenced by
general economic determinants, such as market prices for wood and annual
crops, and by site-dependent determinants, such as the environmental
site quality. We found that the willingness to pay for SRF-based
products and for annual crops most strongly influences the coverage of
SRF in the landscape. SRF will in most cases be established on sites
with low productivity. However, a decrease in the willingness to pay for
annual crops will lead to a reallocation of SRF plantations to sites
with higher productivity. Furthermore, our model results indicate that
the impact of the distance to processing plants on farmers' decisions
strongly depends on general economic determinants and the given spatial
structure of the underlying natural landscape. Analysing the relative
importance of different determinants of an SRF expansion, this study
gives insights into the approach of using SRF to sustainably meet the
growing wood demand. Moreover, these insights are taken as a starting
point for the design of effective government interventions to promote
SRF.
Tags
Agent-based model
Biodiversity
bioenergy
Ecosystem services
energy crops
switchgrass
Impacts
Uk
Germany
Cultivation
Farmer
Bioeconomy
Human
decision-making
Landscape generators
Woody biomass
Perennial energy crops
Coppice