Integrated assessment modeling of climate change adaptation in forestry and pasture land use: A review

Climate change is likely to affect commercial forest and pasture land use and production activities. As such, behavioral responses that adapt to the new and evolving climatic conditions are also likely. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have an important role to play. IAMs are a unique class of models that integrate global biophysical and economic systems in order to explore issues with potentially significant interactions and feedbacks between the two systems, such as potential future impacts from climate change. Climate risks to forestry, pasture, and livestock are potential risks that need to be understood and weighed. Those risks are defined by both the nature of climate change as well as society's adaptive capacity. This paper reviews and characterizes climate change adaptation modeling of forestry and pasture land use by IAMs, as well as economic modeling. The paper discusses what needs to be modeled or considered, what we have learned from the literature available, and issues and opportunities for future research. The literature is sparse, and in an early stage, but has already yielded insights regarding adaptation's potential for reducing risks, and possibly generating societal benefits. Empirical modeling will be important going forward to identify adaptation options and provide an observation based grounding for IAM modeling. Relevant empirical modeling to date is limited but highlights that there are many potential facets to adaptation related to these sectors that need to be considered by IAMs in some form. Data deficiencies will also need to be overcome and IAM model development advanced. This paper is part of a research initiative, and special issue of this journal, to improve adaptation modeling in climate impacts research.