3rd YSN Workshop on Modelling Land Use-Decision Making

Date and Venue

Date: 2-4 June 2007
Venue: Bristol, UK

[Agenda] [Participants]

Motivation

Globally, about 50% of the Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface is or has been allocated for various forms of anthropogenic land-use. Land-use alters the natural landscape in profound ways that impact biogeochemistry and climate on local, regional, and global scales. Furthermore, this effect is compounded through feedback mechanisms including the linkages between land, water, and air. Successful understanding of how decisions are made in land-use and land-use change is needed in reducing the impacts of climate change and predicting future climate.

This small workshop will focus on understanding decision making on land-use issues, in order to move towards modeling these processes in Earth System Models. We encourage interdisciplinary applicants from the natural and social sciences, economics, engineers, and scholars from the humanities with research interested in the Earth System. Participants will also be expected to attend one day of the annual Analysis, Integration, and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) steering committee meeting (June 5) near Bristol, UK. The goal of the YSN workshop will be a manuscript reviewing the state-of-art in decision-making in land-use modeling and its impacts on biogeochemistry and climate from an Earth’s System perspective, and prioritize future research topics. Participants will be expected to write white papers before the workshop, and continue finalizing the manuscript after the workshop.