Agricultural large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) is a process that is currently not captured by land change models. We present a novel land change modeling approach that includes processes governing LSLAs and simulates their interactions with other land systems. LSLAs differ from other land change processes in two ways: (1) their changes affect hundreds to thousands of contiguous hectares at a time, far surpassing other land change processes, e.g., smallholder agriculture, and (2) as policymakers value LSLA as desirable or undesirable, their agency significantly affects LSLA occurrence.

Countries in Southeast Asia have been developing quickly from a predominantly rural to predominantly urban society, leading to a rapid increase in urban land. This increase in urban land has mainly occurred in river deltas and floodplains, exposing humans and human assets to flood hazard. Here we present an assessment of current and future flood risk in five countries of mainland Southeast Asia, using a new modeling approach that accounts for differences in urban land systems.

By law, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ethiopia are severely restricted in their activities towards policy development. In this study we explore to what extent these restrictions have affected NGOs in Natural Resource Management in the Oromia regional state of Ethiopia.

Ecosystem Services (ESs) are bundles of natural processes and functions that are essential for human well-being, subsistence, and livelihoods. The ‘Green Revolution’ (GR) has substantial impact on the agricultural landscape and ESs in India. However, the effects of GR on ESs have not been adequately documented and analyzed. This leads to the main hypothesis of this work – ‘the incremental trend of ESs in India is mainly prompted by GR led agricultural innovations that took place during 1960 - 1970’. The analysis was carried out through five successive steps.

Urban land and rural land are typically represented as homogenous and mutually exclusive classes in land change analyses. As a result, differences in urban land use intensity, as well as mosaic landscapes combining urban and rural land uses are not represented. In this study we explore the distribution of urban land and urban land use intensity in Europe and the changes therein. Specifically, we analyze the distribution of built-up land within pixels of 1 km2. At that resolution we find that most built-up land is distributed over predominantly non-built-up pixels.

Context: The provision of multiple ecosystem services (ES) within a landscape is commonly referred to as landscape multifunctionality. Modifying landscapes to increase multifunctionality and reduce trade-offs with concurrent services bears the potential to enhance sustainability in human-dominated landscapes. Assessing landscape multifunctionality is thus crucial for land management and planning, but lack of a clear definition and operationalization of multifunctionality impedes comparisons of different study results.

In Indonesia, land cover change for agriculture and mining is threatening tropical forests, biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, land cover change is highly dynamic and complex and varies over time and space. In this study, we combined Landsat-based land cover (change) mapping, pixel-to-pixel cross tabulations and expert knowledge to analyze land cover change and forest loss in the West Kutai and Mahakam Ulu districts in East Kalimantan from 1990-2009.

Land use and land cover change is a critical factor of ecosystem services, while water yield plays a vital role in sustainable development. The impact of urban expansion on water yield has long been discussed, but water yield change resulting from cropland protection is seldom concerned. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of cropland protection on water yield by comparing the water yield in two cropland protection scenarios (i.e., Strict Cropland Protection scenario and No Cropland Protection scenario).

Understanding of cropland dynamics in a large geographical extent is mostly based on observations of area change, while the changes in landscape pattern are hardly assessed. The total amount of cropland in China has remained relatively stable in recent years, which might suggest there was little change. In this analysis, we combine the number of cropland patches (NP) with the total cropland area (TA) for a more comprehensive characterization of cropland change in China.

Low-meat and no-meat diets are increasingly acknowledged as sustainable alternatives to current Western food consumption patterns. Concerns for the environment, individual health or animal welfare are raising consumers’ willingness to adopt such diets. Dietary shifts in Western countries may modify the way human-environment systems interact over distances, primarily as a result of existing trade flows in food products.

A wide variety of settlement systems exist, ranging from small villages to large metropolises. However, spatial analyses are typically confined to the mere presence or absence of built-up land and the changes therein, while more subtle differences between various settlement systems are ignored. In this paper we study the spatial distribution of Chinese settlements in terms of their built-up land, cluster density and cluster size, as well as their changes between 1990 and 2010.

Farmers in Ethiopia are elementary for the implementation of land use policies. However, in order to effectively implement these policies, they need to be aware of them, and accept them accordingly. In this study we assess to what extent farmers in the Central Rift Valley are aware of prevailing land use policies in their area, to what extent they participated in the development of these policies, and how they perceive the impacts of these policies, using interviews with local farmers as well as stakeholders from governmental institutions at various levels.