Paper Info
Title
How a Pareto frontier complements scenario projections in land use change impact assessment.
Abstract
To evaluate the sustainability of potential agricultural land developments, scenario projections with land use change models are often combined with environmental impact assessments. Although this allows inter-scenario comparison of impacts, it does not permit interpretation of scenarios in the light of theoretically optimal impacts. A Pareto frontier provides this information. We demonstrate this for ethanol production in Goiás, Brazil, in 2030. For a Business-as-Usual scenario projection, the spatial configuration, production costs, and GHG emissions of the production chain are compared with those obtained from spatial optimization and summarized by the Pareto frontier. Projected production costs are 729 $/m3 ethanol, with GHG emissions of 40 kg CO2-eq/m3 ethanol. The Pareto frontier indicates an improvement potential of ∼50 $/m3 ethanol when keeping emissions fixed, or ∼250 kg CO2-eq/m3 ethanol when keeping costs fixed. Robust locations having low costs and emissions show where and how improvements are reached, offering instruments for policy (re)design.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.08.006
Environmental Modelling & Software
Keywords
Field
DocType
Pareto frontier,Ethanol,Optimization,Brazil,Genetic algorithm,GHG emissions
Impact assessment,Ethanol fuel,Economics,Environmental impact assessment,Hydrology,Natural resource economics,Land use, land-use change and forestry,Greenhouse gas,Pareto principle,Environmental engineering,Sustainability,Agricultural land
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
97
C
1364-8152
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.44
11
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Judith Anne Verstegen1262.13
Jan Gerrit Geurt Jonker220.44
Derek Karssenberg311216.11
Floor van der Hilst4262.13
Oliver Schmitz5364.45
Steven De Jong610512.26
André Faaij7132.22