Forestry in MAGNET : a new approach for land use and forestry modelling

This report discusses improvements of MAGNET in order to improve the analysis of land use change and forestry dynamics. In the standard approach only a difference is made between agricultural land, non-used land that can be potentially used for agriculture, and land that never can be used for agriculture. In the new approach different other land cover types like built - up area and forestry are distinguished. Also the symmetry requirement of the old model is replaced by a more sophisticated mechanism where stylized facts that forest land is normally converted into grassland, and grassland in to cropland can be acknowledged. Next to this the forestry sector is implemented as a sector where land use and harvest of the land are not directly coupled. An explicit function is included that acknowledges that deforestation generates a once and for ever production of wood and other forestry products.