Scenarios of future Land use/Land cover changes: impacts on cropland use in Šiauliai region (Lithuania)

• Autor(a) principal: Gomes, Eduardo
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Inacio, Miguel, Kalinauskas, Marius, Rocha, Jorge, Pereira, Paulo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/53982
• topic: Driving forces; Land use/land cover (LULC); Scenarios; Šiauliai region; Spatial planning

Agricultural systems supply a wide range of ecosystem services. Projecting future agricultural land-use changes is key to anticipating the potential impacts of human activities. In this work, we assessed future agricultural land-use changes, using the Dinamica-EGO platform, under three scenarios: A0-(business-as-usual), A1- (sustainable agriculture), and A2-(agricultural intensification) for 2040 in the Šiauliai region (Lithuania). Spatial autocorrelation was evaluated by using a Moran’s I index and the spatial patterns with the Getis analysis and landscape metrics. The results showed that croplands will increase 29.6% in the A0, 14.95% in the A1, and 29.63% in the A3 scenario. According to the Getis results, cold spots are in the surrounding of Šiauliai city, and hot spots in the northeast of the Šiauliai region. It was verified a high cropland fragmentation in A1 and low fragmentation in A0 and A2 scenarios. These results are critical for land management to understand cropland impacts under different scenarios.