Impacts of greenhouse gas mitigation policies on agricultural land

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are widely acknowledged to be responsible for much of the global warming in the past century. A number of approaches have been proposed to mitigate GHG emissions. Since the burning of fossil-based fuels is an important source of GHGs, the policies on GHG-mitigation encourage the replacement of fossil-based energy with biomass energy. However, a large-scale development of biomass energy may lead to changes in agricultural land use, which are important sources of GHG emissions, and therefore undermine the effectiveness of GHG-mitigation policies. In this research, I analyze the impacts of GHG-mitigation policies on five types of agricultural land (cropland, managed forestry land, pasture land, un-managed forestry land, and un-managed grassland) as well as carbon stored in such land during the 21st century. The scholars in the MIT Joint Program of Science and Policy on Global Change use the Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) to simulate changes in climate in response to GHG-mitigation policies, while the researchers at the U. S. Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) apply the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM) to simulate land productivities. Based on the predictions of land characteristics affecting land-use decisions, I develop an econometric model to predict the land use affected by climate, GHGs, and tropospheric ozone at the grid-cell scale of 0.5 * 0.5 longitude by latitude. I use the Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to capture the regional land use driven by economic forces. Then, I develop the downscaling methods to link these two land-use effects. I conduct this research in two scenarios: in the baseline, I assume that there are no policies to mitigate GHG emissions during the 21st century; in the policy scenario, I assume that there are specific policies to limit GHG emissions during the 21st century.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Xiaodong, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Karen R. Polenske.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42412

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42412