2014 chapter
Regional Scenarios and Simulated Land‐Cover Changes in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
In Vulnerability of Land Systems in Asia.
We used the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects (CLUE-s) model to simulate scenarios of land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC) in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA), a region on the cusp of change due to projected rapid intensification of agriculture and expansion of regional trade markets. Simulated changes affected approximately 10% of the MMSEA landscape between 2001 and 2025 and 16% between 2001 and 2050. Roughly 9% of the current vegetation, which consists of native species of trees, shrubs, and grasses, is predicted to be replaced by tree plantations, tea, and other evergreen shrubs during the 50-year period. Importantly, 4% of this change would be due to the expansion of rubber, a tree plantation crop that may have important implications for local-to-regional scale hydrology because of its relatively high water use for leaf flushing during the driest part of the year.