Assessing future environmental benefits of agricultural abandonment and recultivation

Abstract Agricultural land abandonment presents potential environmental benefits through either revegetation, and associated carbon sequestration, habitat and landscape connectivity benefits, or recultivation, which offsets the need for agricultural conversion of natural areas. Yet, the extent and pace of land abandonment depends on future demand for food, energy, and other anthropogenic drivers. Here we quantify the extent and spatial distribution of agricultural abandonment and conversion in the southeastern US under a range of future development scenarios, addressing (1) what is the extent of future agricultural abandonment and conversion, (2) how much forecast agricultural conversion could be offset by recultivation of abandoned land, and (3) within a given development scenario, how do different strategies for recultivation of abandoned lands influence (a) habitat fragmentation and (b) connectivity for the umbrella species Ursus americanus. Future abandonment ranged from 1.63 Mha (local economic scenario) to 7.95 Mha (local environmental scenario). Future conversion ranged from 1.24 Mha (global environmental scenario) to 5.65 Mha (global economic scenario). While environmental scenarios predicted surplus abandonment available to offset all conversion, economic scenarios predicted enough abandonment to offset a third of conversion at most. Within a given development scenario, strategic recultivation targeting carbon or biodiversity conservation can reduce fragmentation by up to 17% compared to land-use decisions that do not consider those characteristics. However, strategic recultivation did not significantly affect connectivity, which was instead driven by development scenarios: cost-weighted distance to least-cost path ratio was highest in the economic development scenarios and lowest in the environmental concern scenarios. Our results suggest that while socio-economic development scenarios are the primary drivers of land-use change patterns and the attendant ecological consequences, strategic recultivation decisions targeting carbon sequestration or biodiversity potential can reduce habitat fragmentation within development scenarios.