Exploring futures in landscape agronomy: Methodological issues and prospects of combining scenarios and spatially explicit models

Abstract

This chapter describes the combinations of spatially explicit models and scenarios to explore futures of agricultural landscapes. Modeling agricultural landscape changes remains highly challenging and strongly depends on the scale (resolution, extent) considered, leading to various types of models that have respecting advantages and drawbacks. Moreover, the type of scenario (e.g., trends, contrasting, alternative) to be simulated may influence the model design or choice, and vice versa. This chapter outlines main practices for (a) exploring agricultural futures in land change science and (b) LUCC modeling in landscape agronomy highlights, illustrating the converging interests of landscape agronomy and LUCC modeling, and the remaining challenges.