Deforestation scenarios for the Bolivian lowlands Graciela Tejada a,n , Eloi Dalla-Nora a , Diana Cordoba b , Raffaele Lafortezza c , Alex Ovando a , Talita Assis a , Ana Paula Aguiar a a Earth System Science Center (CCST), National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Av. dos Astronautas 1758,12227-010 São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil b Royal Roads University, 2005 Sooke Road, Victoria, BC, Canada c Department of Agriculture and Environmental Science, University of Bari, Via Amendola 165/A, 70126 Bari, Italy article info Article history: Received 5 May 2015 Received in revised form 13 October 2015 Accepted 13 October 2015 Available online 23 October 2015 Keywords: Deforestation scenarios Amazon forest Land cover change (LCC) model LuccME abstract Tropical forests in South America play a key role in the provision of ecosystem services such as carbon sinks, biodiversity conservation, and global climate regulation. In previous decades, Bolivian forests have mainly been deforested by the expansion of agricultural frontier development, driven by the growing demands for beef and other productions. In the mid-2000s the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party rose to power in Bolivia with the promise of promoting an alternative development model that would respect the environment. The party passed the world’s first laws granting rights to the environment, which they termed Mother Earth (Law No. 300 of 2012), and proposed an innovative framework that was expected to develop radical new conservation policies. The MAS conservationist discourse, policies, and productive practices, however, have since been in permanent tension. The government continues to guarantee food production through neo-extractivist methods by promoting the notion to expand agri- culture from 3 to 13 million ha, risking the tropical forests and their ecosystem services. These actions raise major environmental and social concerns, as the potential impacts of such interventions are still unknown. The objective of this study is to explore an innovative land use modeling approach to simulate how the growing demand for land could affect future deforestation trends in Bolivia. We use the LuccME framework to create a spatially-explicit land cover change model and run it under three different de- forestation scenarios, spanning from the present–2050. In the Sustainability scenario, deforestation reaches 17,703,786ha, notably in previously deforested or degraded areas, while leaving forest exten- sions intact. In the Middle of the road scenario, deforestation and degradation move toward new or paved roads spreading across 25,698,327 ha in 2050, while intact forests are located in Protected Areas (PAs). In the Fragmentation scenario, deforestation expands to almost all Bolivian lowlands reaching 37,944,434 ha and leaves small forest patches in a few PAs. These deforestation scenarios are not meant to predict the future but to show how current and future decisions carried out by the neo-extractivist practices of MAS government could affect deforestation and carbon emission trends. In this perspective, recognizing land use systems as open and dynamic systems is a central challenge in designing efficient land use policies and managing a transition towards sustainable land use. & 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Tropical forests in South America play a key role in the provi- sion of ecosystem services (ES) such as carbon sinks, biodiversity conservation, and climate regulation at local, regional, and global scales (Nobre, 2014). However, these unique forests and their services have been threatened by complex, interconnected driving forces such as agricultural expansion, climate variability, and forest degradation (Davidson et al., 2012; Malhi et al., 2008). Bolivia, for example, is listed among the countries with the highest net forest loss during 2000–2010 (FAO, 2010), with 50% of its territory now covered by lowland forests (Killeen et al., 2007). Bolivian lowlands experienced intense colonization from the 1950s to the 1970s due to the migration of peasants from the Andean region (Pacheco, 2006). In the mid-1980s, the agro-in- dustrial corporations engaged in large-scale deforestations mainly in the southwestern portion of the Bolivian Amazon, in Santa Cruz, where current deforestation converted 75% of the land for agri- cultural purposes (Killeen et al., 2008). More recently, interna- tional driving forces, such as the growing demand for agricultural products (mainly soybeans and beef), have been the major cause of deforestation in Bolivia as well as in other Amazonian countries (Dalla-Nora et al., 2014; Müller et al., 2012; Pacheco et al., 2010). In the mid-2000s the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envres Environmental Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2015.10.010 0013-9351/& 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. E-mail address: graciela.tejada@inpe.br (G. Tejada). Environmental Research 144 (2016) 49–63