Gross changes in reconstructions of historic land cover/use for Europe between 1900 and 2010
- 22 September 2014
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Wiley in Global Change Biology
- Vol. 21 (1), 299-313
- https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12714
Abstract
Historic land-cover/use change is important for studies on climate change, soil carbon, and biodiversity assessments. Available reconstructions focus on the net area difference between two time steps (net changes) instead of accounting for all area gains and losses (gross changes). This leads to a serious underestimation of land-cover/use dynamics with impacts on the biogeochemical and environmental assessments based on these reconstructions. In this study, we quantified to what extent land-cover/use reconstructions underestimate land-cover/use changes in Europe for the 1900-2010 period by accounting for net changes only. We empirically analyzed available historic land-change data, quantified their uncertainty, corrected for spatial-temporal effects and identified underlying processes causing differences between gross and net changes. Gross changes varied for different land classes (largest for forest and grassland) and led to two to four times the amount of net changes. We applied the empirical results of gross change quantities in a spatially explicit reconstruction of historic land change to reconstruct gross changes for the EU27 plus Switzerland at 1 km spatial resolution between 1950 and 2010. In addition, the reconstruction was extended back to 1900 to explore the effects of accounting for gross changes on longer time scales. We created a land-change reconstruction that only accounted for net changes for comparison. Our two model outputs were compared with five commonly used global reconstructions for the same period and area. In our reconstruction, gross changes led in total to a 56% area change (ca. 0.5% yKeywords
Funding Information
- FP7-Project GHG-Europe (244122)
This publication has 35 references indexed in Scilit:
- Used planet: A global historyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013
- A high-resolution and harmonized model approach for reconstructing and analysing historic land changes in EuropeBiogeosciences (online), 2013
- All Is Not Loss: Plant Biodiversity in the AnthropocenePLOS ONE, 2012
- The effects of land use and climate change on the carbon cycle of Europe over the past 500 yearsGlobal Change Biology, 2011
- Harmonization of land-use scenarios for the period 1500–2100: 600 years of global gridded annual land-use transitions, wood harvest, and resulting secondary landsClimatic Change, 2011
- EU-wide maps of growing stock and above-ground biomass in forests based on remote sensing and field measurementsForest Ecology and Management, 2010
- Land cover change in Europe between 1950 and 2000 determined employing aerial photographyProgress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 2010
- A reconstruction of global agricultural areas and land cover for the last millenniumGlobal Biogeochemical Cycles, 2008
- Projected Changes in Terrestrial Carbon Storage in Europe under Climate and Land-use Change, 1990–2100Ecosystems, 2007
- Estimating historical changes in global land cover: Croplands from 1700 to 1992Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 1999