Representing large-scale land acquisitions in land use change scenarios for the Lao PDR - land system maps and simulations

We present a novel land change modeling approach that includes processes governing LSLAs and simulates their interactions with other land systems. LSLAs differ from other land change processes in two ways: (1) their changes affect hundreds to thousands ofcontiguous hectares at a time, far surpassing other land change processes, e.g., smallholder agriculture, and (2) as policy makers value LSLA as desirable or undesirable, their agency significantly affects LSLA occurrence.

To represent these characteristics in a land change model, we allocate LSLAs as multi-cell patches to represent them at scale while preserving detail in the representation of other dynamics. Moreover, LSLA land systems are characterized to respond to an explicit political demand for LSLA effects, in addition to a demand for various agricultural commodities. The model is applied to simulate land change in Laos until 2030, using three contrasting scenarios: (1) a target to quadruple the area of LSLA, (2) a moratorium for new LSLA, and (3) no target for LSLA.