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Integrating land use land cover change into future scenarios of electricity systems

Metadata Updated: October 30, 2025

Modeled projections for deep decarbonization require large amounts of solar energy, which may compete with other land uses such as agriculture, urbanization, and conservation of natural lands. Existing capacity expansion models do not integrate land use land cover change (LULC) dynamics into projections. We explored the interaction between projected LULC and solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment by integrating projections of LULC with a model that can project future deployment of solar PV with high spatial resolution for the conterminous United States. We used four scenarios of LULC projections from 2010 to 2050 and two electricity grid scenarios to model future PV deployment and compare those results against a baseline that held 2010 land cover constant through 2050. Though solar PV’s overall technical potential was minimally impacted by LULC scenarios, deployed PV varied by -16.5 to 11.6% in 2050 from the baseline scenario. Land requirements for projected PV were similar to other studies, while measures of PV impacts on natural systems depended on the underlying land change dynamics occurring in a scenario. The solar PV deployed through 2050 resulted in 1.1%–2.4% of croplands and 0.3%–0.7% of natural lands being converted to PV. However, the deepest understanding of PV impacts and interactions with land cover emerge when the complete net gains and losses from all land cover change dynamics, including PV, are integrated. For example, one of the four LULC projections allows for large solar development and a net gain in natural lands, even though PV drives a larger percentage of natural land conversion. This paper represents an initial step in integrating land cover change dynamics with energy expansion models, suggesting it may be possible to capture bidirectional relationships between energy and other processes that require land.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 30, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 30, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-65faf7d7d34e64ff1548cc5f
Data Last Modified 2024-07-30T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id abe5ae1b-5e3a-46f8-8c5e-e698b5ec5ad4
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -124.8489, 24.3963, -66.8854, 49.3844
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash be77fd32e937656ea1b99749ade80afcd80251d741f16f34d461293f26c87425
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -124.8489, 24.3963, -124.8489, 49.3844, -66.8854, 49.3844, -66.8854, 24.3963, -124.8489, 24.3963}

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