Climate Change and Land Use Changes

This chapter applies the spatial interaction model with land use to Terceira island involving: (1) the delimitation of study areas, collection and processing of data relating to: population, occupation of the territory, employment, aggregation of the main economic activities, productivity and consumption by economic sector; (2) collection of data related to the climatic variables of Terceira, orography, soils and territory occupation; (3) determination of soil suitability for each activity considered; (4) carrying out surveys among farmers about the value of agricultural land; (5) model calibration and validation; and (6) application of the model to 5 scenarios of climate change because they involve changes in the basic employment due to the changes in land aptitudes associated to global warming. The model allows to estimate the impacts on the employment in different sectors of activity, their spatial distribution and, using bid-rents, to estimate the changes in real value of the land.