Land-use change - IFs

In the IFs system, the agriculture model dynamically divides land use into 5 categories, initialized by data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization: crop land, grazing land, forest land, ’other’ land, and urban or built-up land. Three major dynamics drive change over time. First, changes in urban land are driven by changes in average income and population, and they are drawn proportionately from all other land types. Second, investment in cropland development is the primary driver of changes in cropland, with net shifts being offset by changes in forest and "other" land proportionately to the relative size of those two categories. Third, changes in grazing land are a function of average income’s effect on meat demand, with net shifts again being offset by changes in forest and "other" land. In addition, the user can specify conservation policies that influence the amount of forest land, with any specified adjustments coming from crop and grazing land. Beyond the implications of land-use modeling for agricultural production (crops and grazing animals), change in the forest category of land use has implications for carbon emissions and/or sequestration. See the sections on Emissions and Climate.