Predictions and patterns of global cropland expansion Seminar

Cropland area is increasing globally to satisfy the growing population and consumption rates. Cropland expansion often comes at the expense of forests, which are critical for conserving biodiversity and mitigating against climate change. Therefore, it is essential to know where cropland expansion is likely to occur in the future in order to design policies that prevent expansion in areas that are most likely to conflict with forest conservation. However, predicting where expansion is most likely is difficult as few data are available on key predictors related to governance. Here, we devise a novel, two-stage method for predicting expansion of cropland. First, available data are used to model where cropland existed in 1992. We then use maps that show where the first model fails to explain cropland in 1992 to help predict expansion of cropland between 1992 and 2015. We show that this approach is an improvement over simply using existing data to predict recent expansion of cropland.

Speaker Information

Professor Felix Eigenbrod - Professor of Applied Spatial Ecology within Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton