Land-use models help us understand how agriculture, environment, and society interact across space. They show not only how much land use may change, but also where these changes are likely to happen on the ground and what their consequences may be. In our research group, land-use modeling is centered on iLANCE, an interdisciplinary model that links economic, biophysical, and spatial information.

iLANCE combines outputs from the economic CGE model with crop growth simulations and detailed spatial data. In this way, it connects social and economic drivers such as demand, prices, trade, and policy with natural drivers such as climate, soils, and crop suitability. This allows us to analyze land-use change processes in a spatially explicit way and to distinguish between different pathways of agricultural change, such as cropland expansion into new areas and intensification or extensification on existing cropland.

A key strength of our approach is that it translates broad scenario results to the local scale. iLANCE can identify where land-use pressure is highest and assess consequences that depend strongly on location, including crop diversity, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse-gas emissions. This helps us better understand trade-offs between agricultural production and environmental protection. Providing grounds for Integrated Assessments for broader Sustainability pathways and economy-wide outcomes. In this sense, iLANCE is an important tool for linking global change processes to concrete land-use decisions and their ecological impacts.