Centre for the study of Environmental Change and Sustainability

Rural Development (RD) is the result of complex, dynamic processes which are determined by a range of driving forces, including demographic, socio-economic, technological and environmental change. As a result, the future evolution of rural areas in the EU is highly uncertain. There is an urgent need to know:

• What are the major trends and driving forces affecting rural regions?
• At which scales do these processes operate?
• Which of these processes are amenable to change through RD policies and governance?
• How might rural policies be adapted in the future to take account of these processes?

FARO EU will help to answer these questions through explorations using different foresight analysis techniques.

CECS leads the foresight analysis, including scenario development and stakeholder consultation, and is involved in the development of a novel rural typology.

Funding:   EU FP6 Specific Targeted Research Project Duration:   2007-2009 Further information:   Mark Rounsevell   Marc Metzger Website:   FARO

The main objective is to develop a predictive tool for the management of wildfire in the UK and for facilitating good practice by those who work with fire in semi-natural vegetation

The main outputs will be evidence-based models of fire occurrence and fire behaviour:

1. An understanding of the relationship between fuel moisture and ignition probability of heathland fuels
2. Models predicting fire behaviour (flame length and rate of spread) in given weather conditions for a range of heathland fuels
3. Tests of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System and the Met Office Fire Severity Index as a means of predicting fire occurrence and fire effects
4. Alternative fire behaviour prediction models and fire risk models of value to land managers and to the Fire & Rescue Services

Funding:   Scottish Government and Scottish Natural Heritage

Duration:   Jan 2006 - Sept 2008

Further information:   Colin Legg

The aim of the whole project is the creation of the scientific and technological bases for new practices and policies under Integrated Wildfire Management in Europe. CECS is collaborating with colleagues in several European countries in the development of fuel succession models for evaluating prescribed burning regimes.

The main outputs from the workpackage to which CECS primarily contributes will be:

1. An object-orientated database representing fuel structures and storing descriptions of a potentially wide range of fuel types
2. A fuel knowledge platform incorporating the fuel database with a user-friendly interface that provides access to data on a wide range of European wildland fuels
3. Simple models of post-fire biomass accumulation that predict the quantity, quality and structure of fuels between burns in prescribed burning regimes

Funding:   EU FP6 Integrated Project Duration:   April 2006 – March 2010 Further information:   Colin Legg

The relationship between urban and rural land-uses is changing rapidly in Europe and has consequences on both human quality of life and the environment. The PLUREL project aims to develop new strategies and planning tools to assess the impacts of this change and help stakeholders to plan sustainable urban-rural relationships for the future.

PLUREL will produce a toolkit of three inter-related components:

1. A 'Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool' for rural-urban regions, taking into account socio-demographic, economical and technological drivers of land-use change.
2. Strategies for sustainable land-use relationships in rural-urban regions, developed in close co-operation with local stakeholders.
3. A 'Data and Map Information Portal' giving access to information on rural-urban regions, such as scenarios of land-use development or spatial data.

CECS is involved in several aspects of the project: transformation of driving forces and technological change (EU level) into land-use change (local/regional level), integration of stakeholder behaviour into the model for impact assessment and scientific co-ordination.

Funding:   EU FP6 Integrated Project Duration:   2007-2010 Further information:   Sophie Rickebusch Website:   PLUREL

This project is a melding of two areas in Earth system science, pushing current understanding in future land-use estimation and atmospheric chemistry-climate. The broad science objective is to quantify the magnitude and uncertainty of the impact of projected land-use change on BVOC emissions and tropospheric O3.

We have five specific science deliverables:

1. Develop a reduced-dimension model of global land use change suitable for probabilistic studies.
2. Generate an ensemble of probabilistic land use projections for 2010, 2030 and 2050 conditional on the IPCC-SRES scenarios and considering a range of socio-economic development pathways.
3. Derive spatial distributions of plant functional types from the ensemble of land use projections
4. Quantify the range and likelihood of BVOC emissions from the ensemble of projected PFT distributions.
5. Quantify the magnitude and distribution of tropospheric O3 and its photochemical precursors using the ensemble of BVOC emission scenarios for 2010, 2030 and 2050.

Funding:   Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

Duration:   2008-2011

Further information:   Xuefeng Cui

Objectives: Develop an ABM to simulate changes in the built environment of East Anglia that arise from individual and private sector behaviour and public sector choices - this includes the development of residential and non-residential properties in both urban and rural areas; To use the ABM to simulate a range of plausible, future changes in the built environment within different socio-economic contexts; To explore the consequences for the built environment within the coastal zone of combined socio-economic and flood defence scenarios.

Norwich Area: Land Use in 2000

The project will create an Agent-based model (ABM) of urban growth using the NetLogo modelling software. The ABM will be used to produce 24 maps of future urban pattern that are consistent with 4 socio-economic and 6 flood defence scenarios. Each map represents the number of (new) properties, distinguishing residential from non-residential use, in each spatial unit (a 250m by 250m grid cell). The Foresight Report (2000-2080) is used as the basis of the SES from a baseline of 2005. The 4 SES are: [1] World Market (WM), [2] National Enterprise (NE), [3] Global Responsibility (GR) and [4] Local Stewardship (LS). SCAPEGIS simulations are used to define coastal land loss for each of 3 FDS: [1] hold the line (H), [2] realignment 0.5 km landward of original defence line (R) and [3] realignment making the maximum use of topography (F). The FDS are applied to the 2005 baseline and projected to 2055. Thus, the possible combinations of FDS are: 1-1 (hold the line in 2005 and in 2055), 1-2, 1-3, 2-2, 2-3, 3-3.

	Free residential properties in 2000 (green)
	Estimated free residential properties in 2010 (green) + location of unsatisfied demand for residential properties (red)
	Estimated free residential properties in 2050 (green)

Funding:   Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research – Coastal Programme Duration:   March 2006 – March 2009 Further information:   Corentin Fontaine

The SEAMLESS integrated project aims at developing a computerized, integrated and working framework (SEAMLESS-IF) to assess and compare, ex-ante, alternative agricultural and environmental policy options, allowing:

1. Analysis at the full range of scales (farm to EU and global), whilst focusing on the most important issues emerging at each scale;
2. 2. Analysis of the environmental, economic and social contributions of a multifunctional agriculture towards sustainable rural development and rural viability;
3. 3. Analysis of a broad range of issues and agents of change, such as climate change, environmental policies, rural development options, effects of an enlarging EU, international competition and effects on developing countries.

The University of Edinburgh contribution includes:

• Co-leadership of WP3 Quantitative models
• Leadership of the Task Force responsible for integrating the field scale and farm scale models
• Quality Assurance of WP 3
• Data provision for regional calibration of models
• Modelling the livestock component of the farming systems models

Two CECS UoE PhD students are also working with SEAMLESS, on energy prices and farming, and the implications of the Water Framework Directive.

Funding:   EU Framework Programme 6 (Global Change and Ecosystems) Duration:   2006-2009 Further information:   Graham Russell   Website:   SEAMLESS

Halting biodiversity loss requires a better understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and historic and current land use change.

The COCONUT project will :

1. gather existing and new data on both historic and current species richness and land use (GIS) across Europe
2. synthesise these data and perform meta-analyses to assess the extent of biodiversity loss and to understand how land use change affects biodiversity change
3. use the results to parametrise predictive models to project future land use and biodiversity change in response to socio-economic scenarios
4. develop decision tools and policy options for the main EU-policy areas for mitigating biodiversity loss, e.g. for agriculture, environment and rural development

CECS is involved in the spatial and thematic down-scaling of the land use scenarios that will provide parameters for the biodiversity modelling.

Funding:   EU FP6 Specific Targeted Research Project Duration:   2006-2009 Further information:   Mark Rounsevell   Marc Metzger   Sophie Rickebusch Website:   COCONUT