Identifying Agricultural Frontiers for Modeling Global Cropland Expansion.

ABSTRACT: The increasing expansion of cropland is major driver of global carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. However, predicting plausible future global distributions of croplands remains challenging. Here, we show that, in general, existing global data aligned with classical economic theories of expansion explain the current (1992) global extent of cropland reasonably well, but not recent expansion (1992-2015). Deviations from models of cropland extent in 1992 ("frontierness") can be used to improve global models of recent expansion, most likely as these deviations are a proxy for cropland expansion under frontier conditions where classical economic theories of expansion are less applicable. Frontierness is insensitive to the land cover dataset used and is particularly effective in improving mo

SUBMITTER: Eigenbrod F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7608111 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature