Future European agricultural landscapes--What can we learn from existing quantitative land use scenario studies

The structure of agricultural production and spatial patterns of agricultural land use in Europe are expected to face major changes over the next decades due to changes in global trade, technology, demography and policies. This paper presents a set of 25 scenarios comprising information on quantitative land use changes in Europe. The scenarios have been selected from studies with different foci, operating on both different spatial scales and different time horizons. Given the diversity of quantitative scenarios this review illustrates the scenario design and its quantification, and evaluates the results of land use/cover changes on a European level. Major gaps of current scenario exercises and suggestions for improvement are topics of the discussion section (Section 4). The focus of this review is on the comparison of selected driving forces and on agricultural land use/cover change in “Western Europe” (i.e. EU-15 plus Switzerland and Norway for some studies). Results show large differences in future land use/cover changes ranging from moderate decreases (15%) to large increases (30%) depending on the assumptions about global trade, increase in agricultural productivity and biofuel production. Domestic demand is a minor factor of land use/cover change since population is only changing slightly, and the consumption level is stable and decoupled from economic growth. Scenarios show that the rate and direction of land cover change differ over time. Considerable shifts towards grassland abandonment in many scenarios reflect the changes in agricultural management. Increasing biofuel production as a result of both increasing energy demand and pro-active climate policies takes up considerable areas in many scenarios and prevents substantial abandonment of agricultural land. Although comparable quantitative results concerning European agricultural land use/cover change are only available on a very aggregated level, the results are important to be dealt with when discussing future challenges of rural areas.