Migration Patterns, Land Use and Climate Change

Land-use and then land cover is one of the key links between human activities and climate change. Clearly land use is influenced by demographic evolutions that can also be constrained by climate change. Whereas there are some physical representations of land use and cover very few socioeconomic models of land use have been proposed. This is surprising since land use is obviously the result of human decision-making processes. As usual in cases involving such decisions, the incentive structure and preference orders underlying human choices has to be explored. An important variable to be considered here is the relative price of different uses of the land. As one knows, land can have different types of use depending on the relative value associated to it. Obviously, a plot of land can be either left to natural cover in which case it still might have a specific value as forested or recreation area or transformed into agricultural land of various kinds or finally used as dwelling or industrial site. According to this perspective land use will then be determined by the relative prices associated to these specific uses. The land price will be established, provided no administrative restriction is introduced (such as zoning for instance), by the competing uses one can make of it. If dwellings bring in more than agricultural use, housing areas and urbanization will expand. However, if agriculture or lumber production or tourism is of high value, land will be used for these purposes and not for housing and so on.