Transcript

N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L H U M A N D I M E N S I O N S P R O G R A M M E O N G L O B A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L C H A N G EUPDATEIH

DP

03/2005

W W W . I H D P . O R GI H D P U p d a t e i s p u b l i s h e d b y t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l H u m a n D i m e n s i o n s P r o g r a m m e o n G l o b a l E n v i r o m e n t a l C h a n g e ( I H D P ) , Wa l t e r - F l e x - S t r. 3 , 5 3 1 1 3 B o n n , G e r m a n y, V. i . S . d . P. : U l a L ö w

1 Land-Use and Land-Cover Change:Developing and Implementing anAgenda for Local Processes withGlobal Impacts | E. Lambin, H. Geist,R. R. Rindfuss

4 Global Changes in Land Cover | N. Ramankutty et. al.

6 Causes, Trajectories and Syndromesof Land-Use/Cover Change | H. Geist,E. Lambin, W. McConnell, D. Alves

8 Pixels or Agents? Modelling Land-Use and Land-Cover Change | P. Verburg, K. Kok, T. Veldkamp

10 Global Land Scenarios: The Searchfor the Future of Land | J. Alcamo,G. Busch

12 Multiple Impacts of Land-Use/Cover Change | A. Chhabra,H. Haberl, A. Braimoh

13 Linking Land-Use/Cover Change Science and Policy | R. S. Reid,X. Jianchu, H. Geist

14 Frontier in Land-Use/Cover ChangeResearch | The LUCC Scientific Steering Committee

16 List of Authors

17 GECHS and LOICZ:Meeting Reports

18 In Brief, Publications

19 Meeting Calendar, Publications

C O N T E N T S

� Following preparatory work in the early 1990s, the Land-Use/Cover Change (LUCC)project was created to develop a research agenda for one of the primary drivers of glob-

al change. It was organized as an interdisciplinary joint core project of the International

Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions

Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), formalized in 1995 through the

publication of its science/research plan (Turner et al., 1995) and reaching the stage of

full implementation four years later (Lambin et al., 1999). From its beginning, the proj-

ect was unique because it integrated social and biophysical science. After a decade of

operation, the LUCC project will phase out in October 2005. Here we introduce this

special issue with its seven articles, and provide thoughts on the LUCC project.

The three missions of the LUCC project had been to build a compendium of infor-

mation about local land-use and land-cover dynamics, to identify a small number of

robust principles that can better knit together local insights into a predictive science,

� continued on page 2

LAND-USE AND LAND-COVER CHANGE: DEVEL-

OPING AND IMPLEMENTING AN AGENDA FOR

LOCAL PROCESSES WITH GLOBAL IMPACTS

BY ERIC LAMBIN, HELMUT GEIST AND RONALD R. RINDFUSS

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ISSN 1727-155X

FO CUS:

LAND-USE AND LAND-COVER CHANGE

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2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

In a second period, following completion of the implemen-

tation strategy in 1999, major headway was made towards syn-

thesizing methodologies and generating results on land-

use/cover change for various classes of land change such as trop-

ical deforestation, desertification, agricultural intensification,

and urbanization (see figure). This was primarily achieved

through a series of synthesis workshops and conferences. The

support infrastructure and dialogue with funding agencies in

the Americas, Europe and Asia continued to be maintained.

In the final phase of the LUCC project, starting around

2003, the concept of land-use transition was discussed within

the scientific steering committee and implications were drawn

for a transition towards sustainable land use. Also in this final

phase, efforts have been concentrated on the creation of a syn-

thesis book, which is nearing completion and the contents of

which are reflected in the following seven articles.

From the beginning, researchers from multiple disciplines

spanning the physical, spatial and social sciences have been

involved in LUCC. These researchers brought with them the

methods and theories of the disciplines in which they were

trained. Much of the early work on integration across studies

involved either data and methodological issues or substantive

empirical results. The empirical work, especially the case stud-

ies, was guided by multiple theories, with the specific mix pri-

marily determined by the disciplinary origins of the investiga-

tors on the team.

What has not yet emerged is an overarching theory that

incorporates the insights from multiple social and natural sci-

ences, and that explains change in the behavior of people as

well as land cover/use change. We believe the time is ripe for

one or more such overarching theories to be developed. There

is evidence that a land change science is emerging, building on

the foundations constructed by LUCC. We are seeing a steady

increase in conferences devoted to land change, journal arti-

cles reporting land change science results, and funding avail-

able to pursue land change science. Emerging sciences need

their own theories. Empirical research has started to pro-

duce a number of stylized facts that can serve as grist

for more general theorizing. Moreover, the practical

issues to which land change science has been

responding (e.g., climate change and biodiversity

loss) demand more comprehensive theories so that we

can better understand the past and predict the future.

While we are not ready to propose an overarching theory of

land change, we are in a position to understand some issues

that such a theory must address. First, an overarching land

change theory needs to engage both the behavior of people

and the uses to which land units are put, as well as feedbacks

from one to the other. Second, an overarching theory of land

change needs to be multi-level with respect to both people and

pixels, recognizing that they can combine in ways that affects

their collective and individual behaviors. Third, an overarch-

ing theory of land change would need to incorporate the

extent to which people, pixels and ecosystems are connected to

the broader world in which they exist. Fourth, an overarching

theory of land use will need to incorporate time, both past

time (history) and the future.

LUCC has produced numerous insights on rates, causes,

patterns, impacts, and future scenarios of land-use/-cover

and to foster the development of common models which may

then become widely available to scientists and stakeholders. To

implement the project’s science/research plan, six major

research themes were set up (box). The time frame for the sci-

ence questions was the past 300 years as well as the next 100.

For most regions of the world, this time frame corresponds to

the most rapid land cover transformations.

Three foci – land-use change, land-cover dynamics, and

modelling – were identified. They served as interlocking

strategies requiring a combination of perspectives. The follow-

ing article by Navin Ramankutty et al. features the major out-

comes in the field of land-cover dynamics (mainly addressing

science question no. 1). The article by Geist et al. presents find-

ings on the causes and pathways of land change (science ques-

tion no. 2), and the articles by Peter Verburg et al. (model-

ling) and Joseph Alcamo et al. (scenarios) address sci-

ence question no. 3. The remaining science questions

are at least partly dealt with in the articles by Abha

Chhabra et al. (on multiple impacts) and by Reid et al.

(on linking land change science and policy). The final

article summarizes recent thinking of the scientic steering

committee, providing an outlook on the research frontier,

which includes the heritage that is handed over from LUCC to

the new Global Land Project.

Historically, three major periods of LUCC can be distin-

guished. In the first (1995–1998), major efforts were undertak-

en to establish the foundations of LUCC, moving towards full

implementation. This was primarily achieved through the

establishment of basic support infrastructure, i.e., scientific

steering committee, international project office, foci offices,

endorsed projects, and regional networks. This was further

accomplished through catalytic development of land-

use/cover change science by associated groups such as the

Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program of the U.S.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and

the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change, both established in 1996.

Box: Science questions of the Land-Use/CoverChange (LUCC) project

(1) How has land cover been changed by human use

over the last 300 years?

(2) What are the major human causes of land-cover

change in different geographical and historical

contexts?

(3) How will changes in land use affect land cover in

the next 50–100 years?

(4) How do human and biophysical dynamics affect

the coupled human-environment system?

(5) How might changes in climate (variability) and

biogeochemistry affects both land use and land

cover, and vice versa?

(6) How do land uses and land covers affect the vul-

nerability of the coupled human-environment

system?

I N T R O D U C T I O N A N D E D I T O R I A L

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 3

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

change at multiple scales. Now, we believe it is a good time for

LUCC to end and the new IGBP/IHDP Global Land Project to

begin.

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/ updatelucc05/references.htm

ERIC LAMBIN, Chair of the LUCC Scientic Steering Commit-

tee, and HELMUT GEIST, Executive Director of LUCC, are

Guest Editors of this UPDATE.

Please note that all authors of the LUCC articles will be fea-tured on page 16.

I N T R O D U C T I O N A N D E D I T O R I A L

� The IHDP UPDATE newsletter features the activities of

the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global

Environmental Change and its research community.

ISSN 1727-155X

UPDATE is published by the

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EDITOR: Ula Löw, IHDP; [email protected]

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Figure: Case study comparison as a tool to synthesizegeneralized information. Sources: Brookfield, Harold

Chilingworth 1962. Local study and comparativemethod: An example from central New Guinea. Annals

of the Association of American Geographers 52: 242-252. Turner, B.L. II/Hanham, Robert Q. & Anthony V.Portararo (1977): Population pressure and agricultur-al intensity. – Annals of the Association of American

Geographers. Vol. 67 (3), S. 384-396.

International Organizationsand Global EnvironmentalGovernance

Berlin Conference on the Human

Dimensions of GlobalEnvironmental Change

2-3 December 2005endorsed by IHDP core projects IDGEC and IT

Global EnvironmentalChange: Regional ChallengesAn Earth System Science PartnershipGlobal Environmental ChangeOpen Science Conference

Beijing, China · 9-12 November 2006

Proposals for sessions may be submitted online October – November 2005 at www.essp.org/ESSP2006

Abstracts for presentations and posters may be submitted online February – May 2006

2nd International Young Scientists’Global Change Conference7-8 November 2006 · Beijing, China

Call for Papers –Young scientists (age35 years or less) areinvited to submitpapers and posters on physical, biological andhuman aspects of global change. Please finddetailed instructions for applications on theSTART website: www.start.org

4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

1. INTRODUCTION

� Human activities have transformed our planet’s land-scape for a long time, initially through the control of fire, and

later through the domestication of plants and animals. More

recently, using fossil fuels, humans have significantly increased

the pace, extent, and intensity of land-use change. Today,

roughly a third of the world’s landscapes are being used for

growing crops or grazing cattle. During the 20th century, land-

use changes have emerged as a “global” phenomenon, with

earth system consequences.

There are numerous local-to-regional scale studies of

landscape change around the world. However, to understand

their earth system implications, a consistent, synoptic, global

view is necessary. To tackle this important challenge, the

LUCC project oversaw two synthesis initiatives. The BIOME

300 project, a joint LUCC-PAGES initiative, promoted the

development of two global historical data sets of land-cover

change over the last 300 years. More recently, LUCC con-

ducted a study, commissioned by the Millennium Ecosystem

Assessment (MA), to identify locations of the world under-

going the most rapid land-cover change today. In a chapter of

the project’s final synthesis book (Ramankutty et al., forth-

coming), we describe changes in global land cover, the chal-

lenges we face in monitoring them, and some proposals for

meeting those challenges.

2. HISTORICAL CHANGES IN GLOBAL LAND COVER

It is common knowledge today that tropical rainforests are

being lost to human activities at unprecedented rates with

enormous consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem func-

tioning. However, it is less well recognized that extensive land

cover changes have occurred in the past. There are numerous

well-documented case studies of the impact of ancient

humans on landscapes: case studies of Ain Ghazal in southern

Jordan, of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, of deforestation of

the cedars of Lebanon, and the story of Easter Island are all

examples. A recent study offered an intriguing global view of

early human influence, suggesting that land-use activities

might have started influencing the global atmospheric compo-

sition of carbon dioxide and methane roughly 8000 and 5000

years ago respectively.

The pace and intensity of land-cover change accelerated

over the last three centuries. According to BIOME 300, crop-

land areas increased from roughly 3–4 million km2 in 1700

to ~15–18 million km2 in 1990 (see figure). Estimates of

grazing land area are more uncertain, but available estimates

show an increase from ~500 million km2 in 1700 to ~3100

million km2 in 1990. Croplands expanded predominantly at

the expense of forests (except in the North American savan-

na and prairies), while grazing land was mostly converted

from savannas, grasslands, and shrublands (except in Latin

America).

Different parts of the world followed different trajectories

of cropland expansion, following the general patterns of Euro-

pean migration and globalization of the economy. In 1700,

much of the large-scale cultivation was confined to the Old

World – in Europe, the flood plains of India and China, and

portions of Africa. With European colonization, new settle-

ment frontiers appeared in the Americas, South Africa, Aus-

tralia, and the Former Soviet Union. North America and the

Former Soviet Union experienced large expansion of crop-

lands since ~1850. The newly developing nations of the world

in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia experienced their

most rapid cropland expansion in the post-World War II era.

China expanded its croplands steadily over most of the last

three centuries.

The post-World War II era saw a shift in land-use practices

toward intensification, with increased use of irrigation, fertil-

ization, pesticides and herbicides, new varieties of crops, and

multiple cropping. As a result, croplands were abandoned in

the eastern United States, Europe, and China. Indeed, a new

trend is the loss of prime farmland to urban expansion.

Between 1961 and 2002, croplands expanded by only 15%

globally, but irrigated areas doubled, fertilizer consumption

increased by 4.5 times, and the number of tractors used in

farming increased by 2.4 times.

3. MOST RAPID LAND-COVER CHANGES OF THERECENT DECADES

Forest change. Deforestation is not widespread through-

out the world but is largely confined to a few well-known

“hotspots” with 2 to 5% annual rates of deforestation. The

Amazon Basin and Southeast Asia are the regions with the

largest number of deforestation hotspots. The temperate

and boreal forests are relatively less well studied, but it is

believed that forest degradation in Eurasia is increasing

from unsustainable logging and increase in fire frequency.

While there is some agreement about the general locations

of deforestation at a regional scale, there is much controver-

sy about the rates of deforestation. The Forest Resources

Assessment (FRA) of the Food and Agriculture Organiza-

tion (FAO) estimated a net tropical forest loss of 12 million

ha yr–1 (6.4 million ha yr–1 loss for the humid tropics

alone) during the 1990s. New remote-sensing based esti-

mates of tropical deforestation indicate that FRA may have

overestimated deforestation rates by ~31% (humid tropics)

to 114% (all tropics). Intercomparison of these studies sug-

gests that the biggest disagreement is in dry tropical Africa;

however, even when dry tropical Africa is ignored, the FRA

estimates are higher by roughly 30%. Furthermore, both the

extent and the rate of change of some open-forest biomes

under high human pressure, like the Brazilian cerrado, still

remain unassessed.

Cropland change. Southeast Asia witnessed the largest

expansion of croplands in the recent decades. The other crop-

GLOBAL CHANGES IN LAND COVERBY NAVIN RAMANKUTTY, FRÉDÉRIC ACHARD, DIOGENES ALVES, B. L. TURNER II, RUTH DEFRIES, KEES KLEIN GOLDEWIJK,

LISA GRAUMLICH, ROBIN S. REID

L A N D - C O V E R C H A N G E

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover ChangeL A N D - C O V E R C H A N G E

land hotspots were located in Bangladesh,

along the Indus valley, portions of the Middle

East and Central Asia, around the Great Lakes

of East Africa, southern Amazon Basin, and

the Great Plains of the United States (although

much of the croplands in the Great Plains is

part of a soil conservation program and is not

sown). Croplands were abandoned in the low-

lands of southeastern United States, eastern

China, and parts of Brazil and Argentina. The

post-World War II period has also seen a shift

toward cropland intensification.

Urbanization change. Roughly half the

world’s population lived in towns and cities in

the year 2000, mainly located along the

coastal zones and inland waterways, in South

and Southeast Asia, eastern US, and Western

Europe. Population growth of urban areas

outstripped those of rural areas during 1990-

2000, particularly in the developing world. In

terms of land-cover change, cities themselves only occupy

roughly 2-3% of the earth’s land surface; cities impact rural

land use, however, through their “ecological footprint”. A

handful of “global cities” (e.g., New York, London, Tokyo) have

become command centers of the globalization of economy,

finances and culture, cross-cutting the various driving forces

and trajectories of global land use dynamics.

Dryland change. Synthesis of dryland degradation studies

continues to be plagued by definitional and conceptual dis-

agreements, and by major gaps in global coverage. Reliable

data on changes in drylands are lacking; most data available to

the LUCC-MA study was heterogeneous in terms of monitor-

ing methods or indicators. Nevertheless, the available evidence

indicated that Asia was a main area with degraded drylands,

and no evidence was found supporting claims of the African

Sahel as being a desertification hotspot.

4. CHALLENGES IN CHARACTERIZING LAND-COVERCHANGES

While much progress has been made in characterizing the

rates and patterns of global land-cover change, some uncertain-

ty remains. For example, we have very poor understanding, at

the global scale, of changes in tropical dry forests, forest changes

resulting from logging, changes in fire frequency and insect

damage, soil erosion and degradation of croplands, changes in

grazing lands, dryland degradation, changes in wetlands, and

changes in suburban, peri-urban, and exurban landscapes.

Certain types of land-cover change are difficult to charac-

terize because of their complexity. For example, land-cover

modifications, which are subtle changes in the characteristics

of land cover without change in the overall classification, are

more difficult to characterize than land-cover conversions,

defined as the complete replacement of one land cover type

by another. Another issue is related to the tight coupling

between climate variability and land-cover change in some

locations. The complex relationship between precipitation

variability and vegetation change in the African Sahel,

between fires in the Amazon and El Niño events, between

grazing and desertification, or forest fragmentation and

increased susceptibility to fires and drought, leads to highly

variable, and often episodic, land-cover changes, character-

ized by positive-feedback relationships between climate and

land-use practices.

5. THE WAY FORWARD

Land-cover change monitoring requires high spatial and

temporal resolution satellite data (30m-resolution Landsat

has become the standard). However, wall-to-wall land-cover

mapping using Landsat is prohibitive at the global scale

(although, it is demonstrated at the regional-scale over

Amazonia by the annual deforestation mapping project of

INPE, Brazil), as well as difficult to perform due to issues

such as cloud cover and partial failure of the ETM+

(onboard Landsat-7) sensor. On the other hand, globally

available moderate resolution data (250m to 1km) from

AVHRR/VEGETATION/MODIS /MERIS sensors are poor at

estimating rates of deforestation without additional calibra-

tion; they, however, may be capable of identifying locations

of deforestation fronts. An optimal solution may be to use

moderate resolution data to identify locations of the world

undergoing land-cover change, and to use stratified statisti-

cal samples of Landsat-type data within them to identify

rates of change.

Land-cover monitoring needs to integrate stakeholders

(land managers) in the process. Important criteria include

1) designing the monitoring system to match the informa-

tion being requested, 2) performing analysis at the scale of

interest to the land managers, and 3) incorporating indige-

nous knowledge to obtain a more complete analysis. Land-

cover change monitoring may also need to be supplemented

by other sources of information such as local observational

networks, census data, land surveys, household surveys, etc.,

to detect subtle land-cover modifications and to enable

characterization of the complete suite of land-cover

changes.

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

Figure: Global land-cover changes from BIOME 300.

6 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

� One of the key activities of the LUCC project has beento generate syntheses of knowledge on land-use/cover

change processes, and in particular to advance understand-

ing of the causes and trajectories of land change. A middle

path was pursued between cross-sectional, broad scale

(often national) statistical analyses and local, fine scale

(often village-level) case studies. These “intermediate analy-

ses” combined the richness of in-depth case studies with the

power of generalization gained from larger samples, thus

sharing the benefits of both, while minimizing their respec-

tive weaknesses.

PROXIMATE AND UNDERLYING CAUSES

From roughly a dozen of major studies on causes of land-

use change – meta-analyses as well as collections of data in

situ across a variety of national boundaries using common

data protocols – it became clear that no single driver of land

change is at hand. For example, a nuanced consideration of

the population variable is needed for decadal-scale processes

(i.e., never works alone but always with other factors in syner-

getic interaction, is often endogenous, and migrations is a

“fast” demographic variable with impacts on land use). As a

consequence, the division, as originally laid down in the

LUCC science plan, between proximate causes (i.e., agricul-

tural expansion, wood extraction, infrastructure extension)

and underlying driving forces (i.e., economic, institutional,

technological, demographic and cultural factors) has been

enriched. Other variables deemed as important in land

change processes were mediating factors, trigger events, and

accelerating or attenuating feedbacks. It is now widely accept-

ed that multiple factors in synergetic interactions dominate

land-change processes, and that these causal clusters vary

across regions and time.

On the one hand, LUCC studies did not follow those pro-

ponents of complexity who state that correlations between

land change and multiple causative factors are contextual,

many and varied, and do not reveal any distinct pattern. Not

denying the fact that context matters, our comparisons of

hundreds of disparate case studies in meta-analyses revealed

that a limited and recurrent set of variables are associated

with major land-change classes. Taking the case of desertifi-

cation, a set of such ‘robust’ factors has been identified to

include changes in precipitation combined with government

policy promoting growth in the agricultural sector and

remote, urban or global demands for agricultural commodi-

ties (such as cotton, grain, and grapes) along with the intro-

duction of new technology in the context of a tenure regime

ill-suited to these new circumstances and lacking flexibility.

This example not only proves that single-factor causation

(e.g., undue management by indigenous pastoralists) must

be dismissed, but it also points to the operation of coupled

human-environment systems within which land managers

are sensitive to social and biophysical feedbacks, and adjust

land-use decisions accordingly. Likewise, from a wide array

of case studies, a suite of social and biophysical factors have

been found to be associated with deforestation, cropland

change, urbanization, and desertification, as laid down in a

book chapter of the project’s final synthesis book (Geist et

al., forthcoming).

TRAJECTORIES OF LAND CHANGE

Place-based research and syntheses in the form of com-

parative analyses identified some dominant pathways of

land-use change. Pathways (or trajectories) usually encom-

pass typical successions or dominant “stories” of causes and

events leading, for example, to tropical deforestation or

desertification. However, trajectories not only vary substan-

tially between major geographical entities but also over

time. In a forest frontier region such as the Brazilian Ama-

zon, for example, rubber extraction for the world market

(from end of 19th to mid-20th century) was followed by inte-

gration of forested regions into national economic develop-

ment, mainly through pasture creation (2nd half of 20th cen-

tury). More recently, cattle ranching that heavily depended

on subsidies and land speculation in the 1970s and 1980s

evolved into intensified land uses for (semi)urban markets,

relying upon well-developed transport and other infrastruc-

tures to satisfy local as well as national demand for cattle-

based products. Most recently, there is indication that glob-

alized market demands regain power in local land-use deci-

sions to convert forests (e.g., for soybean and beef). Thus,

what appears to be a typically homogenous agricultural

frontier pathway in the land-use history of forested main-

land South America, related to in-migrating individual

colonists’ land-use decisions, is indeed driven by local urban

as well as remote economic influences, with strong oscilla-

tions and overlaps between poverty- and capital-driven

land-use dynamics.

Some of the conclusions from the analysis of pathways

of land-use change point to the need to consider sufficient-

ly long land change histories to track a region’s transforma-

tion over time, including land-use transitions. Also, the

ways in which people make land-use decisions represents

an important set of proximate factors that influence land

use, but these framing practices in turn influence and are

influenced by other (underlying) driving forces. Apart from

purely economic deliberations, land managers commonly

have various motivations, collective memories, and person-

al histories, and it is their attitudes, values, beliefs, and indi-

vidual perceptions which influence land-use decisions, for

example, through their perception of and attitude toward

risk. Understanding the controlling models of various

actors may thus explain the management of resources,

adaptive strategies, compliance or resistance to policies, or

social learning, and therefore social resilience in the face of

land-use change.

CAUSES, TRAJECTORIES AND SYNDROMES OF

LAND-USE/COVER CHANGEBY HELMUT GEIST, ERIC LAMBIN, WILLIAM MCCONNELL AND DIÓGENES ALVES

L A N D - U S E D Y N A M I C S

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 7

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

are experienced as constraints. They force local land man-

agers into degradation, innovation, or displacement path-

ways. The other causes are associated with the seizure of new

opportunities by land managers who seek to realize their

diverse aspirations.

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

Table: Typology of the causes of land-use change (from Lambin et al., 2003)

L A N D - U S E D Y N A M I C S

Resource scarcity causing pressure of production onresources

Changing opportuni-ties created by markets

Outside policy intervention

Loss of adaptive capacity and increasedvulnerability

Changes in socialorganization, inresource access, and in attitudes

Slow Natural population growth

and division of land

parcels

Domestic life cycles that

lead to changes in labor

availability

Loss of land productivity

on sensitive areas follow-

ing excessive or inappro-

priate use

Failure to restore or to

maintain protective works

of environmental

resources

Heavy surplus extraction

away from the land man-

ager

Increase in commercializa-

tion and agro-industrial-

ization

Improvement in accessibil-

ity through road construc-

tion

Changes in market prices

for inputs or outputs (e.g.,

erosion of prices of pri-

mary production, unfavor-

able global or urban-rural

terms of trade)

Off-farm wages and

employment opportuni-

ties

Economic development

programs

Perverse subsidies, policy-

induced price distortions

and fiscal incentives

Frontier development

(e.g., for geopolitical

reasons or to promote

interest groups)

Poor governance and

corruption

Insecurity in land tenure

Impoverishment (e.g.,

creeping household debts,

no access to credit, lack

of alternative income

sources, and weak buffer-

ing capacity)

Breakdown of informal

social security networks

Dependence on external

resources or on assistance

Social discrimination (eth-

nic minorities, women,

lower class people, or caste

members)

Changes in institutions

governing access to

resources by different land

managers (e.g., shift from

communal to private

rights, tenure, holdings,

and titles)

Growth of urban aspira-

tions

Breakdown of extended

family

Growth of individualism

and materialism

Lack of public education

and poor information flow

on the environment

Fast Spontaneous migration,

forced population dis-

placement, refugees

Decrease in land availabili-

ty due to encroachment

by other land uses (e.g.,

natural reserves or the

tragedy of enclosure)

Capital investments

Changes in national or

global macro-economic

and trade conditions that

lead to changes in prices

(e.g., surge in energy

prices or global financial

crisis)

New technologies for

intensification of resource

use

Rapid policy changes (e.g.,

devaluation)

Government instability

War

Internal conflicts

Illness (e.g., HIV)

Risks associated with nat-

ural hazards (e.g., leading

to a crop failure, loss of

resource, or loss of produc-

tive capacity)

Loss of entitlements to

environmental resources

(e.g., expropriation for

large-scale agriculture,

large dams, forestry proj-

ects, tourism and wildlife

conservation), which leads

to an ecological marginal-

ization of the poor

‘SYNDROMES’ OF LAND CHANGE

Case study comparisons revealed that not all causes of

land change and all levels of organization are equally impor-

tant. This prompted an attempt to reduce the complexity of

the analysis of causes by identifying a limited suite of

processes and variables which makes the problem tractable

at any scale. The syndrome approach has already been

applied, aiming at a high level of generality in the descrip-

tion of mechanisms of environmental degradation. Land-

use change is driven by a few high-level causes or syn-

dromes, as formed by the combination of ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ vari-

ables (see table): (a) resource scarcity leading to an increase

in the pressure of production on resources, (b) changing

opportunities created by markets, (c) outside policy inter-

vention, (d) loss of adaptive capacity and increased vulnera-

bility, and (e) changes in social organization, in resource

access, and in attitudes. Some of these fundamental causes

Submission of material for assessment by the IPCC Working Group II FourthAssessment: Climate Change, Adaptationand Vulnerability

Deadline: 14th April 2006www.ipcc-wg2.org/index.html

8 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

PIXELS OR AGENTS?Modelling Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

BY PETER VERBURG, KASPER KOK AND TOM VELDKAMP

� Since the publication of the LUCC science plan andimplementation strategy, considerable advances in the field of

regional and global land-use change models have been made.

The science plan indicated that the major task would be the

development of a new generation of land-use/cover change

models capable of simulating the major socio-economic and

biophysical driving forces of land-use and land-cover change.

In addition, these models were supposed to be able to handle

interactions at several spatial and temporal scales. Recent pub-

lications indicate that the LUCC science community has suc-

cessfully met this challenge: a wide range of advanced models,

aiming at different scales and research questions, is now avail-

able. One of the most important observations that can be

made after a review of land-use/cover change models is the

wide variety in approaches and concepts underlying the mod-

els. Particularly noteworthy are recent advances in the devel-

opment of agent-based models. However, the diversity in

modelling approaches should continue to be encouraged and

potential complementarities should be exploited.

WHY MODEL?

Modelling involves the use of artificial representations of

the interactions within the land-use system to explore its

dynamics and possible future development. Modelling should

be seen as one of the methods in the portfolio of techniques

and approaches available to unravel the dynamics of the land-

use system. Whereas descriptive and narrative approaches

focus on mostly qualitative descriptions of the land-use sys-

tem, models require a structural, mostly quantitative, analysis.

Gaps in knowledge become obvious during the model-build-

ing process, and the dependence of land-use patterns and cru-

cial relationships on changes in key variables can be tested.

Such analysis can help to identify the most important mecha-

nisms of change in a certain area that could not be identified

from field observations. Such results may lead to new insights

or guide further analysis of the land-use change processes. In

this perspective, models are used as a learning tool to formal-

ize knowledge. Since real-life experiments in land-use systems

are difficult, computer models can be used as a computational

laboratory in which the hypotheses about the processes of

land-use change are tested.

Apart from being a learning tool in unravelling the driving

factors and system dynamics, land-use change models play an

important role in exploring possible future developments in

the land-use system. With a model the functioning of the sys-

tem can be explored through “what-if” scenarios and the visu-

alization of alternative land-use configurations that may be

the result of policy decisions or developments in society as

described in scenarios. These exploratory and projective

capacities allow models to be used as a communication and

learning environment for stakeholders involved in land-use

decision-making. Projections can be used as an early warning

system for the effects of future land-use changes and pinpoint

hotspots that are priority areas for in-depth analysis or policy

intervention.

CONTRASTING APPROACHES

The diversity of models and modelling approaches has

become increasingly large, which provides a major challenge

when preparing a review. This diversity can be explained by

the wide range of research topics in which models are used as

a tool, the different scales of application, ranging from the

very local to the global extent and the absence of an all-com-

passing theory of land-use change. The widely different

objectives as well as the development of models that inte-

grate different theories and modelling concepts makes it

troublesome to classify models or approaches into distinct

categories. Therefore, a book chapter in the project’s final

synthesis book (Verburg, Kok, Veldkamp and Pontius, forth-

coming) indicates a number of distinguishing issues rather

than model categories. These issues mostly refer to archetyp-

al descriptions of contrasts in approach or concept, even

though most actual models do not comply with these

extreme descriptions. The simplest distinction can be made

between modelling approaches that aim at explicating the

spatial dimensions of LUCC and those that do not address

location issues. The majority of the modelling approaches

are spatially explicit due to the general notion that “location

matters” and the importance of the spatial variation in bio-

physical and socio-economic constraints and opportunities.

It is also possible to make a distinction between broad groups

of models based on their temporal explicitness. Dynamic

models can provide insight into the complex interactions

operating on land. These models are especially useful in cases

where there are nonlinearities, path-dependencies, and other

complex, emergent properties. Static models, such as most

statistical models, do not explicitly account for temporal

interactions but can be used to derive strong, quantitative

measures of the relationships among a set of variables and

how these generate, in equilibrium, a particular, spatial pat-

tern of land-use/cover change. Another major difference

between broad groups of land-use models is the role of theo-

ry. Although all modelling approaches somehow use theory

as a guiding principle in selecting driving factors and rela-

tionships, major differences can be distinguished. Whereas

some, mostly deductive, approaches aim at extending and

testing theory formulation, others use inductive reasoning

based on extensive data sets of land-use/cover (change) in

combination with statistical techniques to specify the rela-

tionships within the model. Although these approaches may

start from a different perspective, they may provide comple-

mentary information: inductive explorations may suggest

mechanisms that can be included in theory while deductive

approaches suggest factors that are causally related and thus

should be accounted for in inductive models. A final distinc-

tion between model types can be made based on the simulat-

M O D E L S O F L A N D C H A N G E

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 9

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

ed objects. In many spatially explicit models the unit of

analysis is an area of land, either a polygon representing a

field, plot or census track, or a pixel as part of a raster-based

representation. Land-use changes are calculated for these

spatial objects, resulting in maps that show the changes in

land-use pattern. The disadvantage of this “land-

based”approach is the poor match with the agents of land-

use change. Individual farmers or plot owners are usually not

represented explicitly and the simulations usually do not

match with the units of decision making. A second, rapidly

expanding, group of models use individual agents as units of

simulation. Several characteristics define agents: they are

autonomous, they share an environment through agent com-

munication and interaction, and they make decisions that tie

behaviour to the environment. Such multi-agent systems

emphasize the decision-making process of the agents and the

social organization and landscape in which these individuals

are embedded. An agent can represent any level of organiza-

tion (a herd, a village, an institution, etc.), and is not thus

necessarily an individual. Agent-based approaches have used

a range of models of human decision making, from simple

heuristics to fully rational or bounded rationality specifica-

tions. A disadvantage of the agent as the basic unit of simula-

tion is the difficulty to adequately represent agent behaviour

and to link it to the actual land areas. Simple, highly abstract,

multi-agent models have been successfully used to examine

alternative processes that may lead to collective behaviour in

land-use decision making. Well established multi-agent

models to predict changes for real landscapes have become

available only recently. Such models are very data demanding

and the specification of realistic agent behaviour and diversi-

ty is very challenging, especially when it comes to the behav-

iour of agents at higher levels of organizations such as insti-

tutions.

WHAT’S THE BEST MODEL?

There is no single modelling approach that is clearly supe-

rior to model land-use/cover change. The choice of model is

largely dependent on the research or policy questions that

need to be answered. No modelling approach is capable to

answer all questions. Furthermore, the research questions may

pose restrictions on the applicability and

suitability of a particular model by its spatial

and temporal scale and dominant land-use

change process. For example, a spatially

explicit cellular automata model may be well

suited to explore urban growth dynamics but

is incapable of fully exploring the driving

factors of agricultural transitions. The wide

selection of models and modelling

approaches that has become available pro-

vides the researcher with the opportunity to

select the modelling approach that best fits

the research questions and characteristics of

the study area. In many cases it may even be

most appropriate to use different models to

study the same region. Comparing the out-

comes of such models may lead to a better

and more complete understanding of the

system dynamics. Again, the different modelling approaches

are not competitors, but complements that can inform each

other. Agent-based models can explore mechanisms that can,

later, be included in spatial simulation models.

THE WAY FORWARD

Recent developments show that a number of modelling

approaches are starting to combine different modelling con-

cepts and techniques into “hybrid” models. Such models use

the strength of different concepts to model the different

processes of land-use change, acknowledging that no single

technique or approach sufficiently describes the different

processes at all the spatial and temporal scales relevant to

land-use/cover change. The development of “hybrid”

approaches may lead to elaborated and complex models.

Therefore, the development of such approaches should take

care for a good balance between simplicity (and transparency)

and complexity depending on the characteristics of the system

studied and the research/policy questions to be answered.

Within the LUCC community a plea is frequently made for

the use of multi-agent models. The use of multi-agent models

should indeed be encouraged because these models offer a

promising and yet mostly unexplored way to simulate land use

dynamics at the level of the actual decision making. However,

the potential strengths of multi-agent models cannot cover the

benefits of all other modelling approaches. Multi-agent mod-

els generally have high data requirements and their specifica-

tion requires deep understanding of decision making when

they are used to simulate realistic case studies. For some stud-

ies this detail is essential, but for many studies well-calibrated

spatial simulation models are easier to specify and provide suf-

ficient detail. Therefore, the diversity in modelling approaches

should be encouraged and potential complementarities

should be exploited. Only by doing this, models of land-

use/over change will continue to be an important tool in

improving our understanding of land-use/cover change

processes and in informing discussions among stakeholders

(see figure).

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

Figure: Model outputs can initiate discussions on the future of land use: an example of a model run for Europe based on the EURURALIS project

M O D E L S O F L A N D C H A N G E

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Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

GLOBAL LAND SCENARIOSThe Search for the Future of Land

BY JOSEPH ALCAMO AND GERALD BUSCH

� It was only fairly recently that the global scientific com-munity turned its attention to the future of land use and land

cover on earth. Of course spatial planners and scientists have

concerned themselves for decades with land-use changes on

the local to national scale. But it took the linkage of tropical

deforestation with global atmospheric CO2 to make land-use

change a global issue. From the work carried out so far, it has

become clear that to anticipate future climate change and

other global changes it is necessary to project the future of

global land use and cover. Yet the scientific community has

been hesitant to take up this challenge – an understandable sit-

uation considering that the projection of land use/cover

requires the simulation of global vegetation (including the

computation of future areas of cropland, forest and grassland)

as well the modelling of society’s countless decisions on where

to settle, where to build, where to grow its crops, and what

lands to protect. Some researchers have found a limited solu-

tion to this challenge by developing scenarios of future land

use and cover. Scenarios are plausible views of the future based

on “if, then” assertions – if the specified conditions are met,

then future land use and land cover will be realized in a partic-

ular way. Scenario analysis, as presented in a book chapter of

the LUCC project’s final synthesis book (Alcamo et al., forth-

coming) does not eliminate the uncertainties of the future

state of land, but it does allow researchers to sum up current

knowledge in the form of consistent, conditional statements

about the future.

Two main inputs are needed for developing global land sce-

narios. First, a coherent set of assumptions are required for the

driving forces of future land use/cover such as demographic

changes, economic growth and technological development.

Second, a model is needed to explain how driving forces affect

different types of land use and cover. While there are many dif-

ferent approaches to modelling land-use and land-cover

change, only two have been applied globally (land-use

accounting models and rule-based/cellular automata models)

because of data deficiencies, scaling mismatches, or long

preparation and run time. Figures 1 and 2 show selected glob-

al scenarios based on these modelling approaches. Included

are the Global Environmental Outlook scenarios of the United

National Environment Programme, the “SRES” scenarios of

the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the sce-

narios of the Global Scenarios Group.

The higher scenarios of future agricultural land (see fig-

ure 1) follow from assumptions about high population

growth rates together with low but steady economic growth

which combine to stimulate large increases in food demand.

At the same time assumed slower rates of technological

progress lead to slow to negligible increases in crop yield.

These combined effects lead to a sizeable expansion of agri-

cultural land, up to 40% between 1995 and

2100 (see figure 1).The majority of scenar-

ios show an expansion of agricultural land

during this period. The lower scenarios

have lower population assumptions leading

to smaller food demands while higher eco-

nomic growth stimulates technological

progress leading to rapid increases in crop

yields. The sum of these effects is lower

demand for agricultural land, with the low-

est scenario showing a decrease of more

than 20% in the global area of agricultural

land. Such large increases and decreases

could have an important effect on the mag-

nitude of greenhouse gas emissions, release

of nutrients and other trace substances to

aquatic ecosystems, and other large scale

impacts on the earth system.

The global forest scenarios largely mir-

ror the agricultural scenarios (see figure 2),

and illustrate both the positive and negative

aspects of existing scenarios. On one hand,

the forest scenarios are a valuable illustra-

tion of the connection between agricultural

trends and the future tempo of global

deforestation or afforestation. On the other

hand, these scenarios imply that forest

trends are driven almost exclusively by

Figure 1: Global scenarios of agricultural land from 1995 to 2100. Sources: Scenarios 1, 2,3, 4: IPCC-SRES scenarios “A1”, “A2”, “B1”, “B2” (IPCC, 2000) computed with IMAGEmodel (IMAGE-Team, 2001). Scenarios 5, 6, 7, 8: Scenarios of Global Scenario Group“Market Forces”, “Policy Reform”, “Fortress World”, “Great Transition” computed by

PoleStar model (Kemp-Benedikt et al., 2002). Scenarios 9, 10: “GEO-3” scenarios (UNEP,2004) “Markets First”, “Policy First” computed with PoleStar model. “Agricultural land”

comprises the land cover classes “Agricultural Land” and “Extensive Grassland” within theIPCC-SRES scenarios computed by the IMAGE model, and is the sum of “Cropland” and

“Grazing Land” in the remaining scenarios.

Figure 1

Scenarios with high population growth, slow technologicalimprovements

0.4

0.5

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0.7

0.8

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1.1

1.2

1.3

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[Year 1995 = 1]

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9Scenarios with higher economicgrowth, faster technologicalimprovements, and changes in foodpreferences

S C E N A R I O S O F L A N D C H A N G E

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 1

Land-Use and Land-Cover ChangeS C E N A R I O S O F L A N D C H A N G E

cropland expansion or contraction and only deal superfi-

cially with global trade in forest products and plans for

large-scale carbon sequestration in forests. Global scenarios

in general need to incorporate many more of the actual

driving forces of land-use/cover change and in a more realis-

tic way.

Despite these simplifications, large scale scenarios can pro-

vide insights and raise provocative questions. The set of

African forest scenarios, for example, show the interesting

feature of distinct turning points at which deforestation

reverses its direction some time between

2010 and 2050 (see figure 3). Several differ-

ent scenarios point to an eventual slowing of

food demand and technological “catch-up”

in Africa which accelerates improvements in

crop yield. The net effect is a shift from

expanding to contracting agricultural land

and a reversal of the trend in deforestation.

But even if the pressure of expanding crop-

land is alleviated, can deforestation be eco-

logically reversed within this time frame?

And what are the consequences of this rever-

sal on terrestrial biodiversity, the global

water cycle and other aspects of the earth

system? By stimulating such questions, sce-

nario analysis of land use/cover contributes

to setting the research agenda of earth sys-

tem science.

Where do we go from here? Up to now

most efforts at developing global scenarios

have focused on agricultural land, and this

is sensible considering the central role of

agriculture in determining the landscapes

of the earth. But focusing too strongly on

only one type of land gives an incomplete

picture about the impacts of land-use

changes on the earth system. To achieve a

more complete picture, global scenarios

must also incorporate a realistic estimate of

future grasslands, forests and urban land.

While we work on expanding the scope of

the scenarios we should also extend the

methodologies used to compute global sce-

narios. Researchers must try to overcome

the barriers noted above (e.g., data defi-

ciencies) that hinder the application of dif-

ferent types of land-use models to global

scenario analysis.

Summing up, while we are only in the

early stages of analysing the future state of

land use and land cover on earth, we have

already learned much from existing scenar-

ios. They indicate the possibility of long term

and large scale changes in land use and land

cover with implications on many aspects of

the earth system. They hint that long term

trends may be reversed after some decades.

Their message is that we are mistaken if we

assume that current land-use/cover patterns

will remain the same, and we should do our best to develop

plausible views of its future changes.

AcknowledgementThis article is reprinted, in a slightly shortened version,

from LUCC Newsletter No. 10, 12-14, with kind permission of

the authors and LUCC International Project Office.

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website at

www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

Figure 2: Global scenarios of forest land from 1995 to 2100. The key to scenario numbers isthe same as in Figure 1. “Forest land” is defined as the sum of “Carbon Plantations”,“Regrowth Forest”, “Boreal Forest”, “Cool Conifer Forest”, “Temperate Mixed Forest”,

“Temperate Deciduous Forest”, “Warm Mixed Forest”, and “Tropical Forest” within the SRES scenarios computed by the IMAGE model. For the

remaining scenarios forest land is the sum of “Natural Forest” and “Plantation”.

Figure 2

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Figure 3

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9

Turning points: Population growthand per capita consumption slowsagricultural technology catches upReversible deforestation?

Figure 3: Scenarios of forest land in Africa from 1995 to 2100. The key to scenario numbersis the same as in Figure 1. “Forest land” is defined as in Figure 2.

1 2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

MULTIPLE IMPACTS OF LAND-USE/COVER CHANGEBY ABHA CHHABRA, HELMUT HABERL AND ADEMOLA BRAIMOH

� The directly human-induced modification and conver-sion of land-cover due to underlying forces of demographic,

economic, technological, policy/institutional, and cultural or

socio-political factors are one of the most visible of global

changes over the last three centuries. The accelerated pace,

magnitude, and spatial extent of these human transformations

of land has significantly influenced the earth's environment at

local, regional and global scales. Land-use/cover change is

increasingly recognized as a major driver of global environ-

mental change, while its multiple impacts may be associated

with “positive” or “negative” influences that affect the ability of

biological systems to support human needs. The continued

increase in food and fibre production, resource use efficiency,

wealth, livelihood securi-

ty, welfare and human

well-being are among the

positive impacts of land-

use/land cover changes.

However, these changes

are also associated with

undesirable or negative

influences such as mas-

sive alterations of bio-

geochemical cycles (e.g.,

nitrogen, carbon and

water), ecosystem pro-

cesses, earth-atmosphere

interactions, loss of bio-

diversity, and soil degra-

dation at different spatial

and temporal scales; as

pointed out in a book

chapter of the LUCC

project’s final synthesis

book (Chhabra et al.,

forthcoming).

Agricultural intensi-

fication has resulted in

direct and indirect

impacts on ecosystem

conditions at the local

scale, and climate change

at regional and global scales. Impacts of land-use/cover

changes can be analysed by assessing changes in patterns and

processes in ecosystems, e.g. by calculating human appropri-

ation of net primary production (HANPP), changes in bio-

mass standing crop, carbon stocks etc. New empirical studies

have also shown that human-induced reduction in biomass

energy availability of ecosystems results in species loss. Bio-

diversity losses currently driven by habitat destruction asso-

ciated with land-cover change will be further exacerbated by

future climate change, resulting in huge economic and socie-

tal consequences.

The widespread usage of biocides for increased agricultural

output growth contributing to food security in most regions

of the world also results in adverse human health conse-

quences. Land-use/cover changes directly affect the habitat of

insect vectors of infectious human diseases e.g. malaria,

African trypanosomiasis, Dengue fever. Increased vulnerabili-

ty to a variety of health risks ranks high among health con-

cerns related to land-use/cover change. The indirect impacts

on health are associated with increased atmospheric concen-

trations of greenhouse gases (mainly methane, nitrous oxide,

and carbon dioxide) resulting in global warming, stratospher-

ic ozone depletion etc.

Changes in land-use/cover also have profound influence on

the regional water balance and hydrological cycle. Soil degra-

dation is another challenge imposed by anthropogenic activi-

ties leading to water ero-

sion (top soil erosion and

terrain deformation),

wind erosion (top soil

erosion), chemical degra-

dation (fertility decline,

acidification, pesticide

pollution, salinization,

heavy metal and radioac-

tive pollution), and phys-

ical degradation (com-

paction, crusting, aridifi-

cation and water log-

ging). Intense land-

use/cover changes in

coastal zones are leading

to degradation of highly

productive ecosystems

such as coral reefs, man-

groves, estuaries etc.,

diminishing levels of fish

and shellfish populations,

reduced biodiversity, an

increase in the delivery of

nutrients and pollutants

to the coastal area, and

increased risk from natu-

ral hazards.

No globally valid

statement is possible yet about an aggregated, overall or gen-

eralized impact of land-use/cover change upon ecosystems

and people in a coupled manner. This is mainly due to the

multiplicity of impacts in terms of various types, time scales,

hierarchical scales, feedbacks or repercussions as well as fac-

tors involved. In an effort, however, to aid and inform deci-

sions that balance human needs for ecosystem goods while

mitigating unintended ecosystem responses, the considera-

tion and quantification of (hypothetical) trade-offs seems

crucial (see figure).

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

Figure: Spider diagram illustrating hypothetical trade-offs between ecosystemsgoods and ecosystem responses before (top) and after (bottom) land-use change

(DeFries, Asner and Houghton, 2004; DeFries, Foley and Asner, 2004).

ecosystem good (e.g. food)

hydrological response (e.g.

peak flow)

climate response (e.g.

temperature change)

human health response (e.g.

disease incidence)

biogeochemical response

(e.g. nutrient fluxes)

biodiversity (e.g. species

extinctions)

ecosystem good (e.g. food)

hydrological response (e.g.

peak flow)

climate response (e.g.

temperature change)

human health response (e.g.

disease incidence)

biogeochemical response

(e.g. nutrient fluxes)

biodiversity (e.g. species

extinctions)

C O N S E Q U E N C E S O F L A N D C H A N G E

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 3

Land-Use and Land-Cover ChangeS C I E N C E A N D P O L I C Y

LINKING LAND-USE/COVER CHANGE SCIENCE AND POLICYBY ROBIN S. REID, XU JIANCHU AND HELMUT GEIST

INTRODUCTION

The need to balance human well-being and environmental

sustainability involves adjusting the way we use ecosystem

goods and services produced by the land. Land use is at the

center of these trade-offs. A large body of policies are just a

reminder that the use of land is a highly political activity, i.e.,

determination of land use should not be left to chance, to

individual land owners or to the market alone. Prominent

examples – involving policies indirectly influencing land use

(e.g., fiscal policies, property law), relating to land-based

activities (e.g., agricultural policy), and policies affecting land

use directly (e.g., nature conservation) – originate from all

biomes of the earth. In lowland Amazonia, developing road

infrastructure within the framework of large-scale develop-

ment programs has created a potent avenue for deforestation.

On humid forest uplands in Southeast Asia, land use has

changed rapidly in response to sectoral and land policies reg-

ulating resettlement, land tenure and agricultural prices. In

drylands of East Africa and Central Asia, implementation of

policy that privatizes land ownership in rangelands rapidly

causes landscape fragmentation and expansion of cultivation

and fencing. US and European macroeconomic policies,

designed to protect high intensity crop production in the

temperate zone, create trade barriers on free importation of

food products, affecting the competitive ability of smallhold-

er farmers in tropical countries, which affects the way farmers

choose to use their land.

Land-use/cover change science has matured into a highly

credible source of clear, salient and useful information for

those interested and involved in policy-making. This lies at the

heart of a book chapter of the project’s final synthesis book,

which expands on examples of the interactions between land-

use science and policy by first describing the key, credible les-

sons from the science of land-use/cover change that may be

relevant to policy; then, exploring examples where land-

change science is already part of the policy process; and, final-

ly, suggesting how the links between science and policy can be

improved. Integration of science and policy is mainly

addressed by a conceptual framework that addresses key char-

acters of a credible, salient and legitimate science that success-

fully links with policy making (Reid et al., forthcoming).

KEY PUBLIC POLICY LESSONS

A few policy lessons can be distilled from what has been

learned in the framework of the LUCC project. These are

meant to be key messages to land managers and political lead-

ers, hopefully suitable to promote sustainable land use. For

example, land change scientists show a limited suite of recur-

rent forces cause land change around the globe. This implies

that causes are not infinite and that policy makers can pro-

mote sustainable land uses by focusing on – and weakening or

reversing – particular “perverse” causes. Misguided sectoral

and macro-economic government policies (e.g., price con-

trols on agricultural inputs and outputs, infrastructure sup-

port, and taxation) are some of the most important causes of

land change, and thus are one key held by policy makers to

influence either sustainable or unsustainable paths of land

use across the globe. Lifestyle choices and consumption pat-

terns of material and non-material goods are also affecting

land-use choices all over the world (e.g., choices away from

farming to construction of leisure homes in pleasant but eco-

logically fragile ecosystems). Policy makers may be more suc-

cessful if they look for and address the underlying causes of

land-use change (institution, policies, population) rather

than only the proximate causes (logging, cultivation), and if

they take into consideration multiple and often interacting

causes (see figure).

Other lessons are more relevant for specific land uses. For

example, in rangelands in arid or semi-arid tropical and sub-

tropical zones, mobility is critical to sustainable land use, and

policies that support mobile lifestyles will curb overgrazing

(or over-utilization of resources). Pastoral land use, all over

the world, is shrinking as farmers push further into marginal

lands and herders settle more often around infrastructure for

water, health and education. Access to large and diverse land-

Figure: Conceptual model showing where, during the processes ofland-use change, national-level policy is likely to have the most

impacts on land use (in red) or where intervention will be more dif-ficult (yellow). Local policy will more easily impact the proximate

causes of change; however, unless the underlying causes areaddressed at the same time, local action may not be sustainable.

1 4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

scapes is critical to maintaining productivity of livestock and

reducing vulnerability of pastoral families, particularly during

drought. Recent privatization and sale of pieces of pastoral

rangelands by pastoral peoples has been aptly termed ‘selling

wealth to buy poverty’. In other agricultural systems, shifting

cultivators and mountain farmers use mobility as a strategy to

access resources over time. Policies need to provide mobile

services to mobile communities to allow them good health

care and educational opportunities while they move livestock

to seasonal pastures.

Specific ‘entry points’ exist where revised or new policies can

improve land-use practices, particularly to weaken positive

feedbacks that accelerate land degradation (see figure). For

example, policy on humid forests could intervene to weaken

some of the amplifying feedbacks linked to forest decline by

revising “deforestation policies” or generating new policy

(much deforestation is caused by poor governance and perverse

subsidies like tax-breaks and low-interest loans that encourage

farmers or land speculators to convert forests). Some of these

policy instruments are easier for policy makers to manipulate

than others (tax breaks, loans), and thus are the first places for

policy action. Policy can also be targeted to strengthen negative

feedbacks that slow the changes having the most negative

impacts on ecosystem goods and services (see figure). For

example, good communication of the location of adverse

impacts of land-use changes to policy makers can allow them to

react in a timely manner to particularly fast or unexpected

changes, or to start a protracted policy discussion in anticipa-

tion of future changes. The keys here are communication of

information in a way that is useful to policy makers, as well as

their early and continuous engagement during the process of

scientific analysis. It is not uncommon that there can be delicate

tip points between sustainable trajectories and those that cause

degradation, as demonstrated by various local scale case studies

of land change. This implies that scientists need to help monitor

the effects of policy instruments, so that unexpected effects can

be countered before degradation starts or becomes too severe.

SUCCESSES, FAILURES, AND WAYS FORWARD TO IMPROVE

Producing credible scientific results is only one prerequisite

for establishing strong links between science and policy. Suc-

cessful links usually require scientists to listen to what is need-

ed in policy making, to create new scientific designs and data

that address these needs, and to actively engage stakeholders

with different viewpoints. Clearly, the different worldviews of

researchers and policy makers create a cultural gap preventing

adequate use of research and adequate understanding of the

needs of policy makers (the groups have contrasting values

and expectations and are rewarded for different behaviours). A

better understanding of the policy development process may

provide scientists with an appreciation of places where they

may engage and impact the process. For example, participato-

ry approaches and pilot demonstrations of solutions are par-

ticularly effective, and increase the legitimacy of science, while,

in contrast, non-participatory approaches can be quite inef-

fective.

Land-use change science has had some successes and some

failures in influencing policy. The key is for scientists to link

their work to social/political processes (e.g., in the form of

assessments such as the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment,

with significant input from LUCC researchers) and use this

linkage to set more ‘salient’ research priorities that address

issues of concern to policy makers and other stakeholders. For

example, in the discussion of science and policy, a focus

beyond scientists and policy makers is needed, including the

viewpoints of the land users themselves throughout the

process. Once scientists listen to questions posed by policy

makers and land users, they will be able to frame salient,

appropriate and useful policy research questions. They will

then be able to design their research to collect the most effec-

tive data to address the policy problem.

Priority problems in land use often occur at broad scales

across landscapes and regions. This creates a difficulty in poli-

cy, because, particularly in developing countries, there are few

institutions that naturally operate at these scales: many func-

tion locally or internationally, but not in the ‘missing middle’.

In general, collective action is more difficult when more peo-

ple or institutions are involved, are in different locations, and

hold different worldviews.

Much of global land-change science has improved our

understanding of connections between land use and the envi-

ronment. Some of the land-change science at the local and

national levels now focuses further along, on how big the

problem is for different stakeholders, what to do about it (mit-

igation options) and how to monitor progress on addressing

the problem. Research is likely to have the most impact if it

develops replicable and credible indicators for use in monitor-

ing and enforcement.

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

FRONTIER IN LAND-USE/COVER CHANGE RESEARCHBY THE SCIENTIFIC STEERING COMMITTEE OF THE LUCC PROJECT

S C I E N C E A N D P O L I C Y

� At the end of a ten year research project, the list of newissues to be investigated is often longer than the list of research

findings. The objective of this article is to highlight some of

the important issues at the frontier of land-use/cover change

research. The following sample of topics, which is far from

being an exhaustive list, is a condensed summary of a brain-

storming session of the Scientific Steering Committee of

LUCC, held in spring 2004.

UNDERSTANDING LAND-USE TRANSITIONS

Urbanization and migrations are likely to play an ever

dominant role in shaping new land uses, further disconnecting

spaces of consumption and production worldwide. Migration

is generally thought to have a stronger impact on land-use

change than mortality and fertility, at least at time scales of a

few decades. In future population-environment studies,

micro- to macro-scale demographic variables should be stud-

ied in context rather than as exogenous driving forces. The

development of megacities tends to dominate discussions on

urbanization (e.g., urban lifestyle impacts/influences on

remote rural areas), but networks of secondary cities and peri-

urban areas are also crucial in land-use change as urban-rural

linkages are stronger at that level.

Globalization and “export” of land use via international

trade also deserves more attention – e.g., in the case of boom-

ing economies such as China that pulls products from the

entire world with non-negligible land-use impacts in some-

times distant countries. In the same vein, future land-use

research needs to better consider constraints such as capital

availability, technology, policies, and macro-economic shocks,

and the cross-scale interactions between these factors. The

expansion of agricultural frontiers remains an important

research topic, e.g. in the Amazon, but this expansion is

increasingly linked to urbanization and globalization in ways

that remain poorly understood.

Managing transitions towards sustainable land use, which is a

normative exercise, needs to address these global-local inter-

plays. Transitions are sensitive towards global as well as local

and regional constraints and opportunities. Locally, engage-

ment and communication with stakeholders in regions where

teams conduct land-use change research need to be more sys-

tematic. This will often require, first, establishing interfaces

with other disciplines that will be relevant to assess impacts of

land-use/cover change, and, second, considering multiple

scales of governance structures, institutions, conflicts and

interactions between multiple agents.

VULNERABILITY IN THE FACE OF LAND-USE CHANGE

There are many research opportunities to understand vul-

nerability in a multidimensional, dynamic way. This research

needs to couple social as well as ecological vulnerability and

integrate the multiple impacts of land-use change on societies

and ecosystems – e.g., on social and economic well-being,

food security, health but also water resources, the carbon

cycle, and ecosystem functioning. The linkage between land

and water use needs to be better understood and incorporat-

ed into vulnerability studies. Water impacts on land-use

change are an important issue (e.g., irrigation farming in dry-

lands). One of the most important trade-offs facing many

societies engaged in intensive agriculture is between water

quality and agricultural development. Likewise, new research

requires an integration of emerging results from biocomplex-

ity research on patterns of biodiversity at multiple scales, with

strong linkages to research on conservation biology and liveli-

hood security.

While land-use change research has tended to focus on so-

called “slow variables”, a big challenge is to better integrate

extreme events of all kinds: climate events (e.g., at ENSO-type

time scales, decadal scale, etc.) but also human events (e.g.,

wars, conflicts, economic shocks). These “fast variables” often

determine the resilience and collapse of systems. Surprises

happen but the integration of surprises into land-use change

research has not yet happened to the extent required. The con-

cept of resilience establishes the link between risks from

extreme events and social well-being.

LONG-TERM SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The global change scientific community increasingly stud-

ies coupled human-environment systems on time scales of

hundreds to thousands of years. Land-use change researchers

have much to offer to long-term social-ecological research. At

these long-time scales, there is a strong footprint of agriculture

which needs to be better explored and quantified, including

impacts on biogeochemical cycles.

TOOLS AND METHODS

Prominent among new tools and methods is integrated

modelling. Some of the next steps needed to improve models

include better integration of social and biophysical drivers,

better modelling of decision making by agents, an improved

ability to model lag times and thresholds in land-use deci-

sions, and multisource data integration (e.g., remote sensing

with census and household survey data). Integrated modelling

work should rely on global, regional and local scale digital

databases, not just on land-cover classes, but also on land

management (fertilization, irrigation, etc.), with more partici-

patory open GIS and data sharing.

Future scenarios of land-use change should be formulated

in the context of multiple stakeholders. Agent-based models

increasingly become a tool of choice for understanding deci-

sion making, even though they should not be viewed as a

panacea. Spatially explicit, multi-agent simulation models

allow simulating surprises and evaluating their potential

impacts on the landscape.

Much has been learnt on the causes of land-use change

through meta-analyses of large numbers of case studies. A

methodological challenge is to move beyond a posteriori

meta-analyses of results, but rather conduct comparative

analyses of case studies by analyzing original data from these

case studies. This requires standardized data collection

descriptions that allow comparisons, while still recognizing

the need to fine-tune data collections to the most relevant

processes in specific localities. While a standardized land-

cover classification system has now been produced, an equiva-

lent scheme for land use is crucially needed.

More generally, land-use change researchers will have to

further diversify their portfolio of analytic methods: not just

multiple regressions but also narratives, system and agent-

based approaches, network analysis, etc.

Many of these issues will be taken up by the new IGBP-

IHDP Global Land Project (GLP).

REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website

at www.ihdp.org/updatelucc05/references.htm

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover ChangeF U T U R E R E S E A R C H

A U T H O R S

1 6 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

FRÉDÉRIC ACHARD is a Scientist at the Joint Research Centre

of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy;

[email protected]; www-gvm.jrc.it.

JOSEPH ALCAMO is Professor of Environmental Sciences and

Engineering at the University of Kassel, Germany, and mem-

ber of the LUCC Scientific Steering Committee

[email protected]; www.usf.uni-kassel.de.

DIÓGENES ALVES is Senior Researcher at the National Insti-

tute for Space Research (INPE), Sao José dos Campos, Brazil,

and member of the LUCC Scientific Steering Committee;

[email protected]; www.dpi.inpe.br/dalves/Diogenes.

ADEMOLA BRAIMOH is Post-doctoral Researcher at the Unit-

ed Nations University in Tokyo, Japan; [email protected]; www.ias.unu.edu.

GERALD BUSCH is Senior Researcher and Consultant in Envi-

ronmental Sciences at the University of Kassel, Germany;

[email protected]; www.usf.uni-kassel.de.

ABHA CHHABRA is Post-doctoral Researcher at the Space

Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation,

Ahmedabad, India, and member of the LUCC Scientific

Steering Committee; [email protected]; www.isro.org.

RUTH DEFRIES is Professor of Geography at the University of

Maryland, USA; [email protected]; www.glue.umd.edu/~rdefries/homepage.

HELMUT GEIST is Executive Director of the LUCC project at

the International Project Office of the Catholic University of

Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; geist@ geog.ucl.ac.be; www.geo.ucl.ac.be/LUCC.

LISA GRAUMLICH is Executive Director of the Big Sky Insti-

tute, Montana State University, USA, and Vice Chair of the

LUCC Scientific Steering Committee; [email protected];

www.bsi.montana.edu.

HELMUT HABERL is Professor of Social Ecology at Klagenfurt

University, Vienna, Austria; [email protected];

www.iff.ac.at.

KEES KLEIN GOLDEWIJK is Senior Scientist at the Netherlands

Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), Bilthoven, The

Netherlands; [email protected]; www.mnp.nl.

KASPER KOK is Science Officer of the LUCC Focus 3 Office at

Wageningen University, The Netherlands; [email protected]; www.lucc.nl.

ERIC LAMBIN is Professor of Geography at the Catholic Uni-

versity of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and Chair

of the LUCC Scientific Steering Committee; [email protected]; www.geo.ucl.ac.be/LUCC.

WILLIAM MCCONNELL is Assistant Professor of Geography

at Michigan State University, USA, and Science Officer of the

LUCC Focus 1 Office; [email protected]; www.indi-ana.edu/~act.

NAVIN RAMANKUT TY is an Assistant Scientist at the Univer-

sity of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, and member of the LUCC

Scientific Steering Committee; [email protected];

www.sage.wisc.edu.

ROBIN S. REID is Principal Systems Ecologist and Leader of

the Sustaining Lands and Livelihoods Programme at the

International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya,

and member of the LUCC Scientific Steering Committee;

[email protected]; http://lucideastafrica.org.

RONALD R. RINDFUSS is the Robert Paul Ziff Distinguished

Professor of Sociology and Fellow of the Carolina Population

Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA,

and member of the LUCC Scientific Steering Committee;

[email protected]; www.cpc.unc.edu.

B. L. TURNER II is Milton P. and Alice C. Higgins Professor

of Environment and Society at Clark University, Worcester,

MA, USA; [email protected]; www.clarku.edu/depart-ments/geography/faculty/turner.cfm.

TOM VELDKAMP is Professor of Soil Science at Wageningen

University, The Netherlands, Leader of LUCC Focus 3, and

member of the LUCC Scientific Steering Committee;

[email protected]; www.wau.nl.

PETER VERBURG is Assistant Professor of Environmental Sci-

ences at Wageningen University, The Netherlands; [email protected]; http://www.cluemodel.nl.

JIANCHU XU is Professor of Ethnobotany and Programme

Manager at the International Centre for Integrated Moun-

tain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal, and member of the

LUCC Scientific Steering Committee; [email protected];www.icimod.org.

LIST OF AUTHORS ARTICLES PP. 1 - 17

In Memoriam:

Anver GhaziHead of the European Commission Research Unit

on Climate Change and Natural Hazards

† 25 July 2005

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 7

Core ProjectsG E C H S / L O I C Z

� An international workshop on Human Security and Cli-mate Change was held in Oslo, Norway from June 21-23, 2005.

This GECHS-sponsored workshop brought together research

communities that are addressing human security from three dis-

tinct perspectives. One perspective, based on a state-centered

interpretation of human security, explored whether climate

change will lead to increased conflict and international migra-

tion. A second perspective used a broad interpretation of human

security and considered how climate change might influence

vulnerability and adaptive capacity, and hence human security. A

third perspective focused on legal and philosophical aspects of

climate change, and considered whether climate change could be

framed as an issue of national security. The workshop served as

a milestone for bringing together these diverse points of view

and expanding the debate about what climate change means for

human security. Taking advantage of the long Nordic Mid-sum-

mer night, the 65 participants from over 20 countries were able

to share research findings, experiences, and perspectives. It was

clear at the end of the event that climate change is likely to influ-

ence multiple aspects of human security. Although its impacts

on individuals, communities, and regions may trigger both con-

flict as well as cooperation, climate change represents a formida-

ble challenge to human security in the 21st Century.

The workshop was organized in collaboration with GECHS

by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) and Center for

International Climate and Environment Research- Oslo

(CICERO), with generous funding from the Research Council

of Norway, UNEP’s Department of Early Warning and Assess-

ment, and the Norwegian Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Papers presented at the workshop are available on the meeting

website: www.cicero.uio.no/humsec.

KAREN O’BRIEN is Chair of the Global Environmental

Change and Human Security Project (GECHS), based at the

Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University

of Oslo, Norway; [email protected]; www.gehs.org

HUMAN SECURITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

� The LOICZ Inaugural Open Science Meeting 2005 ushedLOICZ’s second decade as a global change program. Building

on its strengths in examining material fluxes from catchments

to coast, the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone

(LOICZ) project will now embark on a broadly expanded

research framework focusing on the interactions between

humans, ecosystems and material fluxes as drivers of coastal

change. Over the three days of the meeting, which took place

in Egmond aan Zee (The Netherlands) from 27 to 29 June

2005, a community of some 270 coastal scientists and man-

agers representing 52 countries engaged in discussion about

these interactions and their trajectories of change, including

ways to approach sustainable coastal scenarios.

Two plenary addresses each day provided an overview of the

challenges facing the global environmental community. These

presentations exemplified the broad domain of research themes

that are encompassed within the LOICZ Science Plan and Imple-

mentation Strategy (SPIS) and addressed some of the science

challenges that face the next 10 years of LOICZ activity. Plenary

addresses were followed by oral presentation sessions where a

keynote talk and paper presentations provided insight of future

research needs and work in progress in regard to the research

themes covered by the LOICZ Science plan. The meeting also

importantly included afternoon workshops to develop research

proposals and action plans targeting knowledge products.

The meeting provided opportunity for researchers and prac-

titioners to forge new linkages, or renewed ties, with colleagues

to pursue LOICZ related activities. Beyond the Open Science

Meeting, we hope that participants will have been encouraged

to become, or remain, active in the LOICZ network. The success

of LOICZ as a platform for global change research greatly

depends on the individual and collective strength of its commu-

nity members to see the program through to fruition.

MARTIN LETISSIER is Deputy Executive Officer of the LOICZ

Project, Texel, The Netherlands; [email protected]; www.loicz.org

COASTS AND COASTAL PEOPLE – SCENARIOS OF

CHANGES AND RESPONSES

� IHDP (International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change) and APN(Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research) announce the Fifth International Human Dimen-sions Workshop – Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change: Water, Trade, andthe Environment, held in October 2006, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

We invite academic researchers who are in the early phases of their careers, policy makers, andpractitioners dealing with issues of water, trade, and environment, and who are based in Asia,Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America, to apply to attend this workshop. Applicationdetails will be circulated in October 2005.

Please visit our webpage www.ihdp.org for more details or contact Maarit Thiem at [email protected]

N E W S

1 8 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

In Brief

��� HIROKI HASHIZUME is the new Executive Director of

APN (Asia-Pacific Network on Global Change Research). He

is an engineer and environmental scientist with a vast field of

expertise who has held key positions with the Japanese Envi-

ronment Agency, the Ministry of Environment, and the Min-

istry of Health.

��� HOLM TIESSEN is the new Executive Director of IAI

(Inter-American Institute of Global Change Research). He is

a molecular biologist and soil scientist and was awarded the

Alexander von Humboldt Science Prize in 1998.

��� MARTIN RICE has been appointed as ESSP Coordina-

tor by the Earth System Science Partnership (consisting of

DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP). Martin Rice will be

based at the DIVERSITAS Secretariat in Paris.

��� YANYU TIAN, Scientific Secretary of

the Chinese National Committee on IHDP,

has been with the IHDP Secretariat in

Bonn, Germany, since July 2005. As a visit-

ing scientist, his current work is to assist the

team with its preparations for the 6th Open

Meeting of the IHDP research community.

As a geographer, his main field of research

is historical land-use and land-cover change.

��� SUNITA NAHRAIN and the Centre for Science and Envi-

ronment (CSE) have been awarded this years’ Stockholm

Water Prize. Ms. Nahrain is a dynamic advocate for water,

environment, human rights, democracy and health. Among

other successes, CSE has revived the idea of harvesting rain-

water as a means to manage water sources locally, which

could become a starting point for the removal of rural pover-

ty in many parts of the world.

��� The African Network on Global EnvironmentalChange Planning Workshop is held from 22 to 24 September

in Nairobi, Kenya, co-organized by the Pan-African START

(Systems for Analysis, Research and Training) Secretariat. The

purpose of the workshop is to gauge interests and preferences

of the African scientific and policy communities as to the

nature of a regional networking organization that could best

serve the needs of the two communities in support of global

change science and capacity development in Africa. Network

structures and processes, funding strategies and long-term

international support are among the issues looked into. Two

START/PACOM (Pan-African Regional Committee for

START) calls for proposals for African scientists and doctoral

fellowships, respectively, have just ended.

IN BRIEF

Yanyu Tian

Gerhard Petschel-Held* 31.1.1964 † 9.9.2005

His death leaves us shocked and deeply

shaken. We got to know him as an

excellent scientist and outstanding

personality. His early death is a great loss to the entire

community working on an interdisciplinary understand-

ing of human-environment interactions.

http://portal.pik-potsdam.de/gerhard/

Call for Proposals under the CAPaBLE ProgrammeA: Capacity Building Pro-posals for funding fromApril 2006 that are relat-ed to Global Change andSustainable Development.Deadline for submission:26th October 2005B: Comprehensive Research Proposals for Capaci-ty Enhancement, with a specific focus on ClimateChange and its effects on Water and Food Secu-rity as related to Sustainable Development.Deadline for submission: 9th November 2005.Full details can be obtained on the APN websiteat: www.apn-gcr.org/en/CAPaBLE_callforpropos-als/ capable_cfp05.htm

Our Earth’s Changing LandAn Encyclopedia of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (Two Volumes)

By Helmut Geist

Scientists predict that the envi-

ronment over the next 100 years

will be threatened by severe

challenges—the loss of biodiver-

sity, expected changes in world-

wide climate, and decreasing

amounts of arable land and

potable water for an exploding

human population. All of these

will greatly impact how the earth

will be able to support life in the future. And at the

center of these global environmental changes are

developments in land use. Over the last 300 years, and

in particular the last 50 years, the earth’s land has been

altered drastically as a result of increasing industrial-

ization and urbanization worldwide, as well as by

changes in agricultural techniques in lands under cul-

tivation. These developments raise troubling questions

about out future: How will these changes affect the

sustainability of certain types of land use? How will

they impinge upon critical regions, like rainforests and

NEW BOOKS

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 9

Calendar/PublicationsN E W B O O K S

deserts? Will the earth be able to provide for the basic

human needs of food, shelter, and water?

Greenwood Publishing, 2005 (forthcoming), List Price:

£125.00, ISBN 0-313-32704-1, Order by email: Green-

[email protected]

Seeing the Forest and the TreesHuman-Environment Interactions in Forest Ecosystems

Edited by Emilio F. Moran and Elinor Ostrom

Throughout much of human history, changes to forest

ecosystems have come about through natural climatic

changes occurring over long periods of time. But sci-

entists now find changes in forest cover dramatically

accelerated by such human activities as large-scale

agriculture, the building of dams and roads, and the

growth of cities with vast areas of asphalt. Changes that

once took centuries now take only decades. ‘Seeing the

Forest and the Trees’ examines changes in land cover

and land use in forested regions as major contributors

to global environmental change. It investigates why

some forested areas thrive even in the presence of high

human densities and activity while others decline and

disappear.

The book brings together findings from an ongoing,

large-scale, multidisciplinary research project under-

taken by anthropologists, geographers, economists,

sociologists, political scientists, environmental scien-

tists, and biologists in more than twelve countries at

over eighty locations. After addressing theory and

methodology, including chapters on satellite remote

sensing, geographic information systems, and model-

ing of land-cover change, the book presents case stud-

ies that compare data across sites and across temporal

and spatial scales. It contributes to Human Dimen-

sions in Global Change research and proposes new

directions for this area of study.

MIT Press, July 2005, 504 pages, 59 illus., 8 color ,

$83.00/£53.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-262-13453-5

Agriculture and Climate Beyond 2015A New Perspective on Future Land Use Patterns

Edited by Floor Brouwer and Bruce A. McCarl

Interactions between agriculture, climate and patterns

of land use are complex. Major changes in agriculture,

and land use patterns are foreseen in the next couple

of decades in response to shifts in climate, greenhouse

gas management initiatives, population growth and

other forces. This timely new book explores emerging

perspectives on future land use patterns, exploring

linkages between agriculture and efforts to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions. It will be widely read by

academic, researchers and policy makers with an

interest in agriculture, land use and resource econom-

ics. The book will appeal to those researching and

working at the edge of agriculture, land use and green-

house gas emissions control.

Springer, forthcoming 2005, approx. 350 p. hardcover,

special prepublication discount: € 68; Environment &

Policy, Volume 46, ISBN 1-4020-4063-6;

Special Journal on Consumption and Industrial Ecology

The Journal of Industrial Ecology, a peer-reviewed,

international quarterly published by MIT Press and

owned by Yale University, has recently published a spe-

cial issue on Consumption and Industrial Ecology. The

entire special issue is available on the web at http://mit-press.mit.edu/JIE/consumption for download at no

charge. This issue breaks new ground in providing sys-

tematic and quantitative assessments of the impact of

consumption – what we buy and what we use – on the

environment. The articles in the special issue address

the relationship between consumption and factors such

as diet change, time use, house size, worktime reduc-

tion, product life spans, quality of life, NGO advocacy

strategies, and the rebound effect, as well as the envi-

ronmental impact of consumption at the household,

city and national levels in countries around the world.

MEETING CALENDAR��� 2–6 October – Perth, Scotland, UK

Global Change in Mountain Regionshttp://www.mountain.conf.uhi.ac.uk

��� 9–13 October – Bonn, Germany

6th Open Meeting of the Global Environmental ChangeResearch Community“New Challenges for the 21st Century: Global EnvironmentalChange, Globalization and International Security”http://openmeeting.homelinux.org

��� 24–27 October – Kolding, Denmark

Oceans Past: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the History of Marine Animal Populationshttp://www.marbef.org

��� 25–29 October – Kusadasi, Turkey

7th Int. Conference on the Mediterranean Coastal Environmenthttp://www.medcoast.org.tr

��� 28–29 October – Farnham, UK

Sustainable Innovation 05: Global ‘State of the Art’ in Sustainable Product/Service Development and Designhttp://www.cfsd.org.uk/events/tspd10/index.html

��� 9–12 November – Oaxaca, Mexico

Integrating biodiversity science for human well-beinghttp://www.diversitas-osc1.org

��� 13–17 November – Melbourne, Australia

Greenhouse 2005: Action on Climate Controlhttp://www.greenhouse2005.com

��� 2–3 December – Berlin, Germany

International Organizations and Global EnvironmentalChangehttp://www.fu-berlin.de/ffu/akumwelt/bc2005/

2 0 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 3 / 2 0 0 5

C O N T A C T A D D R E S S E SAddresses

IHDP SECRETARIAT

• IHDP Secretariat:Barbara Göbel, Executive DirectorWalter-Flex-Strasse 3 53113 Bonn, Germany Phone: +49-228-739050Fax: [email protected]

IHDP CORE PROJECTS

� GECHS

• Global EnvironmentalChange and Human Security c/o Karen O'Brien, ChairGECHS International Project OfficeDepartment of Sociology andHuman GeographyUniversity of Oslo, [email protected]

� IDGEC

• Institutional Dimensions ofGlobal Environmental Change c/o Heike Schröder, Executive OfficerIDGEC International Project Office,Bren School of Env. Science andManagement, University of Califor-nia at Santa Barbara, CA, [email protected]://fiesta.bren.edu/~idgec/

� IT• Industrial Transformation c/o Anna J. Wieczorek,Executive OfficerIT International Project OfficeInstitute of Environmental Studies University of AsterdamThe [email protected]://130.37.129.100/ivm/research/ihdp-it/index.html

� LOICZ• Land-Ocean Interactions inthe Coastal Zonec/o Hartwig Kremer and MartinLe Tissier, Excecutive Officers,LOICZ International Project OfficeDen Burg, Texel, [email protected]

� LUCC

• Land-Use and Land-CoverChange c/o Helmut Geist, Executive Officer LUCC International Project Office University of Louvain,Louvain-la-Neuve, [email protected]/LUCC

JOINT ESSP PROJECTS

� GECAFS

• Global EnvironmentalChange and Food Systems c/o John Ingram, Executive OfficerGECAFS International ProjectOffice, NERC-Centre for Ecology &Hydrology, Wallingford, [email protected]

� GCP

• Global Carbon Projectc/o Pep CanadellExecutive OfficerGCP International ProjectOffice, CSIROCanberra, [email protected]

Tsukuba Officec/o Penelope CananNational Institute of EnvironmentalStudies, Tsukuba, [email protected]

� GWSP

• Global Water Systems Projectc/o Eric Craswell, Executive OfficerInternational Project Office GWSPCenter for Development Research,University of Bonn, [email protected]

IHDP SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (SC)

� Chair

• Coleen Heather VogelDept. of Geography & Env. StudiesUniversity of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South [email protected]

� Vice Chair

• Roberto Sánchez-RodríguezUC-Mexus, University of CaliforniaRiverside, CA, [email protected]

• Katrina BrownSchool of Development StudiesUniversity of East Anglia,Norwich, [email protected]

• Geoffrey DabelkoEnvironmental Change and SecurityProject (ECSP)Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter for Scholars, WashingtonD.C., [email protected]

• Carl FolkeCentre for Research on NaturalResources and the Environment(CNM)CNM, Stockholm UniversityStockholm, [email protected]

• Roberto GuimarãesUnited NationsDivision for SocialPolicy andDevelopmentNew York, NY, [email protected]

• Gernot KlepperKiel Institute of World EconomicsKiel, [email protected]

• Tatiana Kluvankova-OravskaInstitute for ForecastingSlovak Academy of SciencesBratislava, Slovak [email protected]

• Sander van der LeeuwDepartment of Anthropology,Arizona State University, Tempe,AZ, [email protected]

• Elinor OstromCenter for the Study ofInstitutions, Population &Environmental ChangeIndiana UniversityBloomington, IN, [email protected]

• Xizhe PengInstitute of Population ResearchFudan UniversityShanghai, P.R. [email protected]

• Hebe VessuriDepartment of Science Studies,Instituto Venezolano deInvestigaciones Cientificas, Caracas,[email protected]

• Paul L.G. VlekCenter for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn,Bonn, [email protected]

EX OFFICIO MEMBERSIHDP SCIENTIFICCOMMITTEE

� ICSU• Thomas RosswallExecutive Director ICSUParis, [email protected]

� I S S C• Lourdes Arizpe Universidad Nacional Autónomade México (UNAM)Cuernavaca, [email protected]

� DIVERSITAS

• Michel LoreauÉcole Normale SuperieureLaboratoire d'Écologie Paris, [email protected]

� IGBP

• Guy Brasseur Max-Planck-Institute for MeteorologyHamburg, [email protected]

� START (alternating)

• Sulochana GadgilIndian Institute of Science& Oceanic SciencesBangalore, [email protected]

• Graeme I. PearmanCSIRO Atmospheric ResearchAspendale, [email protected]

� WCRP

• Peter LemkeAlfred-Wegener-Institutefor Polar and Marine ResearchBremerhaven, [email protected]

� GECHS

• Karen O’Brien Institute for Sociology & Human GeographyUniversity of Oslo, [email protected]

� IDGEC

• Oran R. Young Bren School of Environmental Science and ManagementUniversity of California at Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA, [email protected]

� IT

• Frans BerkhoutDirector, Institute forEnvironmental Studies (IVM),Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,The [email protected]

� LOICZ

• Liana Talaue McManusRosenstiel School of Marine andAtmospheric ScienceUniversity of Miami, Miami, FL,[email protected]

� LUCC

• Eric Lambin Dept. of GeographyUniversity of LouvainLouvain-la-Neuve, [email protected]

� URBANIZATION

• Karen Seto Dept. of Ecological & Environmental Sciences Stanford University, USA [email protected]

� GLP (Global Land Project)

• Richard Aspinall & Dennis OjimaInterim [email protected]@nrel.colostate.eduwww.glp.colostate.edu

Printed on 100% recycled paper


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