The FASOM (European Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization) Model

Objective

The EU-FASOM model explores welfare maximizing total land-use strategies, including greenhouses gas emission control and carbon sink strategies in Europe that meet wider environmental objectives on inter alia soil, water and biodiversity protection.

Model characteristics

FASOM is a bottom-up, dynamic partial equilibrium model of the agricultural – forestry – biomass for energy sectors, which simulates land use management under environmental, political, and technical change. EUFASOM uses constrained welfare maximization to simulate the market equilibrium in the forest, bioenergy and agricultural markets. The EU-FASOM integrates a wide spectrum of environmental impacts for each land management option by integrating results from biophysical simulation models.

Typical features and results

• The spatial resolution of the EUFASOM includes European countries (EU27) and up to 28 international regions. Natural variation e.g., with respect to altitudes, soil textures and farm types within European countries is accounted through integration of relative shares of aggregated homogenous response units. The model currently covers carbon, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes. Crop growth, soil erosion, nutrient leaching, and agricultural soil carbon levels for annual and perennial crops are estimated with the EPIC model. IIASA's forest model simulates forest biomass growth and carbon balances under different planting and thinning regimes. In addition to farms and a large number of crop, livestock, and timber processing options, explicitly modeled activities include biorefinery options to produce several bioenergy and biomaterial products.

Data sources

• Transport statistics from EUROSTAT

Input from other EC4MACS models

• Projections of agricultural activities (from the CAPRI model)
• Biophysical management responses in agricultural production (from EPIC/DNDC model)
• Biophysical management responses in forest production (from OSCAR/DNDC model)
• Scale dependent cost functions of second generation power plants / refineries (from the BEWHERE model)

Output to other EC4MACS models

• Costs of emission control measures (to the GAINS model)

Developed by

• University Hamburg and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)