Estimating future emissions from land use, land use change and forestry : ecosystem services in forward-looking modelling

Although complex systems such as land systems cannot be fully represented with models, they stimulate discussion that can help understand the potential risks of trade-offs between ecosystem services when there are pressures on land-based systems. We are building upon a flexible and modular spatially-explicit land use modelling platform to enhance the role of ecosystem services in our modelling approach by allowing the user to prioritise ecosystem services as part of the decision process in the model. Furthermore, the output will report the trade-offs in ecosystem services for different scenarios. In this report, we describe the implementation of the ecosystem service "climate regulation" in the LUISA-BEES (Land Use Integrated Sustainability Assessment - Bioeconomy and Ecosystem Service) land use modelling platform. Here we have developed a spatially-explicit Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) module to estimate the associated emissions in CO2 equivalent, under different biomass demand scenarios in the EU. The specificities of this module, and the rationale behind its development, are described. The results of the model run between 2012-2020 are compared with the UNFCCC reporting for 2020 in the CRF tables (2022 submissions). Results show important discrepancies between the reporting and the modelling output. These are discussed and suggestions for improvements are presented.