An empirical analysis of US land-use change under multiple climate change scenarios

Abstract

This study empirically estimates the effects of climate on land-use change across the conterminous United States and uses the empirical model to simulate the effects of a range of future climate change scenarios on the allocation of land to forestry, agriculture, and development. Ricardian estimation linking climate with the net returns to land production is integrated with a discrete-choice estimation of plot-level land-use change. Comparing projected land-use changes across scenarios, we find that drier and warmer climate scenarios favor forest land, wetter and cooler climate scenarios favor developed land, and wetter and warmer climate scenarios favor crop lands.