Agricultural Land Use Change Options and Climate Change

Abstract

The natural growth of the population inevitably leads to rapid urbanization, which is presently one of the dynamic and serious issues. Urban sprawl converts forest and farming lands into urban lands, leading to the decrease of arable forming lands and economic forest lands, which presents the threat to the food security, lumber industry and environment for human beings Wu and Oueslati [1]. In the US, there is an annual conversion of 500,000 ha away from food and fiber production systems. Coupled with a one percent annual population increase, this will reduce today’s allocation of 0.6 ha per person to 0.3 ha by 2050 Francis et al. [2]. Besides economic impacts, the environmental quality is also significantly affected Bhattarai et al. [3], Thomas and Sporton [4]; Walsh et al. [5]. Both field observations and simulative and numerical analysis suggest that urban growth-driven land-use changes significantly influence the surface heat balance, exchange of water vapor and momentum between the atmosphere and the surface layer, and consequently results in the changes of the environment Vadrevu et al. [6]; Vlachogiannis et al. [7]. Most importantly, with decreased farming lands, agricultural practices are expected to be intensified including increased use of fertilizers in order to boost productivity. This eventually results in aggravated environmental impacts in terms of water contamination and greenhouse gas emission, which ultimately will lead to climate change. Climate change studies have documented clear warming trends globally, which results in higher surface temperatures. Global average surface temperature increased by about 0.74°C during the 20th century; over the next 40 years, the average US temperature is projected to increase by 1‒2°C, with increase of 2–3°C in the interior Lysak and BuggeHenriksen [8].