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. 2010 Dec 7;107(49):20887-92.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1002096107. Epub 2010 Nov 15.

National housing and impervious surface scenarios for integrated climate impact assessments

Britta G Bierwagen  1 , David M Theobald, Christopher R Pyke, Anne Choate, Philip Groth, John V Thomas, Philip Morefield
Affiliations

National housing and impervious surface scenarios for integrated climate impact assessments

Britta G Bierwagen et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Understanding the impacts of climate change on people and the environment requires an understanding of the dynamics of both climate and land use/land cover changes. A range of future climate scenarios is available for the conterminous United States that have been developed based on widely used international greenhouse gas emissions storylines. Climate scenarios derived from these emissions storylines have not been matched with logically consistent land use/cover maps for the United States. This gap is a critical barrier to conducting effective integrated assessments. This study develops novel national scenarios of housing density and impervious surface cover that are logically consistent with emissions storylines. Analysis of these scenarios suggests that combinations of climate and land use/cover can be important in determining environmental conditions regulated under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We found significant differences in patterns of habitat loss and the distribution of potentially impaired watersheds among scenarios, indicating that compact development patterns can reduce habitat loss and the number of impaired watersheds. These scenarios are also associated with lower global greenhouse gas emissions and, consequently, the potential to reduce both the drivers of anthropogenic climate change and the impacts of changing conditions. The residential housing and impervious surface datasets provide a substantial first step toward comprehensive national land use/land cover scenarios, which have broad applicability for integrated assessments as these data and tools are publicly available.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Housing density for the conterminous United States shown as (A) actual housing density in 2000; (B) modeled housing density in 2100 for base case; (C) for scenario A2; and (D) for scenario B1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Percent changes in housing classes and other land cover types by scenario.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Area covered by impervious surface over time for all five scenarios.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Comparison of status of HUC-8 watersheds between B1 and A2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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