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Socio‐economic scenarios such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) have been widely used to analyze global change impacts, but representing their diversity is a challenge for the analytical tools applied to them. Taking Great Britain as an example, we represent a set of stakeholder‐elaborated UK‐SSP scenarios, linked to climate change scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways), in a globally‐embedded agent‐based modeling framework. We find that distinct model components are required to account for divergent behavioral, social and societal conditions in the SSPs, and that these have dramatic impacts on land system outcomes. From strong social networks and environmental sustainability in SSP1 to land consolidation and technological intensification in SSP5, scenario‐specific model designs vary widely from one another and from present‐day conditions. Changes in social and human capitals reflecting social cohesion, equality, health and education can generate impacts larger than those of technological and economic change, and comparable to those of modeled climate change. We develop an open‐access, transferrable model framework and provide UK‐SSP projections to 2080 at 1 km2 resolution, revealing large differences in land management intensities, provision of a range of ecosystem services, and the knowledge and motivations underlying land manager decision‐making. These differences suggest the existence of large but underappreciated areas of scenario space, within which novel options for land system sustainability could occur., Key Points: A national‐scale agent‐based model is developed to represent paired climatic and socio‐economic scenarios in the land system. Key scenario characteristics relate to forms of human behavior, interactions and societal preferences. Large differences emerge between scenarios in terms of land management intensities, ecosystem service provision and land sparing., Helmholtz Association http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100009318, Natural Environment Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000270, Climate Resilience Programme, Forestry Commission UK Forestry Commission http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100017497, UKRI, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000266, Global Food Security Programme, DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service London http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001654, Government of the United Kingdom http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100013986, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001655, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100009133, Leibniz‐Gemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001664, https://landchange.earth/CRAFTY, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/CY8WE

Socio-economic scenarios such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) have been widely used to analyse global change impacts, but representing their diversity is a challenge for the analytical tools applied to them. Taking Great Britain as an example, we represent a set of stakeholder-elaborated UK-SSP scenarios, linked to climate change scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways), in a globally-embedded agent-based modelling framework. We find that distinct model components are required to account for divergent behavioural, social and societal conditions in the SSPs, and that these have dramatic impacts on land system outcomes. From strong social networks and environmental sustainability in SSP1 to land consolidation and technological intensification in SSP5, scenario-specific model designs vary widely from one another and from present-day conditions. Changes in social and human capitals reflecting social cohesion, equality, health and education can generate impacts larger than those of technological and economic change, and comparable to those of modelled climate change. We develop an open-access, transferrable model framework and provide UK-SSP projections to 2080 at 1km2 resolution, revealing large differences in land management intensities, provision of a range of ecosystem services, and the knowledge and motivations underlying land manager decision-making. These differences suggest the existence of large but underappreciated areas of scenario space, within which novel options for land system sustainability could occur.

Projecting the distribution of population is critical in supporting analysis of the impacts and risks associated with climate change. In this paper, we apply a computational algorithm parameterised for the UK Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (UK-SSP) narratives to create 1-km gridded urban land use and population projections for the UK to the end of the twenty-first century. Using a unimodal neighbourhood function, we model heterogeneity in urban sprawl patterns. The urban land use maps are used as weights to create downscaled population projections. We undertake a model uncertainty analysis using 500 simulations with varying parameter settings per UK-SSP. Results illustrate how sprawl can emerge from scenario conditions even when population numbers decline, and irrespective of socio-economic wellbeing. To avoid negative environmental externalities associated with uncontrolled sprawl, such as in UK-SSP5 and UK-SSP3, planning policies will be vital. Uncertainties about future population development in the UK are higher in rural areas than in urban areas. This has an effect on the competition for land and influences confidence in projections of broader land system change.