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Long-term spatial projections of global ruminant distribution 2015 – 2050

Christoffer Axelsson1*, Daniele Da Re2, Giuseppina Cinardi3, Qingyou Zhao1, Sophie O. Vanwambeke2, Timothy P. Robinson3 and Marius Gilbert1
  • 1 Free University of Brussels, Belgium
  • 2 Earth and Life Institute, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
  • 3 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy), Italy

The spatial distribution of livestock (cattle, goats and sheep) will strongly influence human and environmental health in the coming decades, with implications for food security, climate change, and the spread of diseases. This study breaks down country-level future projections made by the FAO (FAO, 2018) to create maps of global livestock projections (2015-2050) at a resolution of 0.5° (~ 50 km). We use current and historical livestock densities to create a random forest spatio-temporal prediction model based on their association with layers of land use, climate, human population density and topography (Gilbert et al., 2018). The model is then applied on published projection maps of future land use (Chini, Hurtt, & Frolking, 2014), climate (Karger et al., 2017), and human populations (Jones & O’Neill, 2016). Finally, we adjust the predicted densities to be in accordance with the country-level projections of the FAO Future of Food and Agriculture (FOFA) model. Resulting projections are made for the three future scenarios that have been captured by the FAO FOFA projection and predictor variables: towards sustainability, business as usual, and stratified societies, along axes of increasing societal and environmental challenges.

Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the FNRS project WISD X302317F.

References

Chini, L. P., Hurtt, G. C., & Frolking, S. (2014). Harmonized Global Land Use for Years 1500-2100, V1. ORNL DAAC. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1248 FAO. (2018). The future of food and agriculture - Alternative pathways to 2050 (p. 224). Rome. Gilbert, M., Nicolas, G., Cinardi, G., Van Boeckel, T. P., Vanwambeke, S. O., Wint, G. W., & Robinson, T. P. (2018). Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010. Scientific Data, 5, 180227. Jones, B., & O’Neill, B. C. (2016). Spatially explicit global population scenarios consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Environmental Research Letters, 11(8), 084003. Karger, D. N., Conrad, O., Böhner, J., Kawohl, T., Kreft, H., Soria-Auza, R. W., … Kessler, M. (2017). Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas. Scientific Data, 4, 170122.

Keywords: livestock density, Future prediction, spatio-temporal modeling., Ruminants, Projection map

Conference: GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data, Davis, United States, 8 Oct - 10 Oct, 2019.

Presentation Type: Regular oral presentation

Topic: Spatial data sources, open data, accessibility and information integration

Citation: Axelsson C, Da Re D, Cinardi G, Zhao Q, Vanwambeke SO, Robinson TP and Gilbert M (2019). Long-term spatial projections of global ruminant distribution 2015 – 2050. Front. Vet. Sci. Conference Abstract: GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data. doi: 10.3389/conf.fvets.2019.05.00016

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Received: 06 Jun 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. Christoffer Axelsson, Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, christoffe@hotmail.com