Land use maps of scenarios for South Westphalia (SWF) for Deliverable D3.5

This work is part of the KNOWING project Deliverable 3.5 available here:

https://knowing-climate.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/KNOWING_D3.5_SouthWestphalia_final_PU-1.pdf

The different files represents the 2050 final land use map for the region of South Westphalia as part fo the KNOWING project.

• A baseline scenario (BaselineScenario_2050.asc) where no change in forest conversion is observed and only the demand for increase housign is happening.
• A fast afforestation scenario (Afforestation_fast_2050.asc): To test the impact of afforestation in isolation means there are no conversions allowed in the existing forest areas, and that calamity areas are assumed to regrow as their original spruce. For natural carbon sequestration involving forests there is a significant build-up phase as the juvenile trees grow where their ability to sequester carbon is minimal. Consequently, to reach additional sequestration by a target date requires early implementation to allow time for the slow build-up. This was illustrated here by a fast implementation scenario where all the additional forest was converted by 2030 as well as a gradual implementation scenario with a consistent yearly increment until 2050.
• Implementarion of windturbines: A key part of the climate mitigation strategy in SWF and Germany as a whole is the construction of wind power. When constructed in forest areas, the positives for emission reduction by replacing fossil fuels are balanced by the associated direct and indirect carbon losses from construction and over the lifetime of the turbine. To this end, the total number and speed of wind turbine implementation in the forest were experimented with to evaluate which implementation strategy would provide the most renewable energy to reach net zero targets by 2035 while maintaining mitigatable carbon losses. We tested several implementation
  • 300 windturbines (Windturbines_300_2050.asc)
  • 500 windturbines graduall established (Windturbines_500_2050_Gradual.asc) or all established at the start of the simulation (Windturbines_500_2050_Fast.asc)
  • 810 windturbines (Windturbines_810_2050.asc)
• Mixed forest scenario (PermanentForestry_2050.asc): All calamity areas in Southwestphalia are converted to climate adapted mixed forest.

• A scenario that combine the development of 300 wind turbines with mixed forest (Combination_Windturbines_MixedForest_2050.asc) Afforestation and 300 wind turbines

Baseline information for the scenarios is produced through the following files: