Land Use and Conservation Scenarios for California's 4th Climate Change Assessment

This dataset consists of modeled projections of land use and land cover for the State of California for the period 2001-2101. The Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS) model was initialized in 2001 and run forward on an annual time step to 2100. In total 9 simulations were run with 10 Monte Carlo replications of each simulation. Two base scenarios were selected from Sleeter et al., 2017 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000560/full) for analysis, including a "business-as-usual" (BAU) land use scenario and a scenario based on "medium" population projections. For each base scenario we ran three alternative conservation scenarios where we simulated conversion of lands into conservation easements. The three conservation easement scenarios simulated conversion of 1) 120 km2/yr for 15 years, 2) 120 km2/yr for 30 years, and 3) 240 km2/yr for 30 years. All easement conversions were set to begin in 2020 and extend for their stated duration. In addition to the conservation easement scenarios, we also ran a variant of the BAU land use scenario where current Williamson Act lands were removed from the simulation of future conditions.