Assessing resource-use efficiency of land use

authored by

Alexander Herzig, Trung Thanh Nguyen, Anne Gaelle E. Ausseil, Ganga Ram Maharjan, John R. Dymond, Sebastian Arnhold, Thomas Koellner, Daniel Rutledge, John Tenhunen

Abstract

We introduce an explicit indicator and the Land Use Management Support System to assess the resource-use efficiency of land use (RUE) at the landscape scale. To estimate RUE, we relate land-use performance with regard to ecosystem services indicators to the maximum possible land-use performance based on an optimised land-use configuration. The test application of the RUE assessment in the Haean catchment, South Korea, shows that the land-use system's RUE could be increased by 11% for both nitrate and sediment loss. The estimated headroom could indicate whether potential contaminant reduction targets for the downstream water reservoir Lake Soyang could be achieved with the current land-use system. The recurring RUE assessment for a given region might indicate the effectiveness of spatial planning and policy measures to improve the RUE in that region. Future work should address the integration of RUE into a participatory spatial planning or resource-management framework.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Environmental Economics and World Trade

External Organisation(s)

Landcare Research
University of Bayreuth

Type

Article

Journal

Environmental Modelling and Software

Volume

107

Pages

34-49

No. of pages

16

ISSN

1364-8152

Publication date

09.2018

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software, Environmental Engineering, Ecological Modelling

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 15 - Life on Land

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2018.05.005 (Access: Closed)