Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Modeling Biofuel Expansion Effects On Land Use Change Dynamics, Ethan Warner, Daniel Inman, Benjamin Kunstman, Brian Bush, Laura Vimmerstedt, Steve Peterson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Increasing demand for crop-based biofuels, in addition to other human drivers of land use, induces direct and indirect land use changes (LUC). Our system dynamics tool is intended to complement existing LUC modeling approaches and to improve the understanding of global LUC drivers and dynamics by allowing examination of global LUC under diverse scenarios and varying model assumptions. We report on a small subset of such analyses. This model provides insights into the drivers and dynamic interactions of LUC (e.g., dietary choices and biofuel policy) and is not intended to assert improvement in numerical results relative to other works.

Demand …