How land is used is connected to some of the most important issues of our time: sustainable development, economic development, reducing territorial inequalities and the rights of future generations, to name but a few. There is growing recognition that a wide range of policies shape how land is used and managed beyond that of land use and environmental planning systems.

Is digitalization conducive to promoting carbon reduction in cultivated land use while empowering high-quality socio-economic development and intelligent territorial spatial planning? Derived from China’s provincial panel data from the period 2011 to 2019, in this paper, we employ a fixed-effect model to study the impact of the digital economy on carbon emissions from cultivated land use and apply an intermediary-effect model to estimate the impact that the structure of the digital economy has on carbon emissions from cultivated land use.

Many studies have investigated the effects of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) on livelihood, while the effects of LSLA by different actors on investment decisions and levels of investment have largely gone without academic scrutiny. Consequently, information concerning the implications of LSLA by actors on investment is scarce in the literature pertaining to policy.

Land expropriation has always been a hot spot of social conflicts. The land expropriation policy of Merging Villages and Living Together (MVLT) in rural areas has intensified conflicts due to insufficient financial compensation and “demolishing old houses before building new ones”.

In building a market for the transfer of land contracting rights, it is crucial to clarify the influencing factors for farmers’ farmland transfer decisions to promote the orderly transfer of farmland. This article investigates the impact of social capital on farmland transfer and analyzes the moderating effect of marketization of farmland transfer using research data from 1017 farm households in Hubei Province.

Since the global crises in the 2000s, many foreign and domestic actors have acquired large tracts of land for food and biofuel crop cultivation and other purposes in Africa, often leading to the displacement of the African people living on customary land. The weak customary land rights of ordinary African people have been viewed as one of the main factors making it possible for various land-grabbers to exploit customary land with different purposes.

Both human activities and climate change have changed landscapes significantly, especially in coastal areas. Sea level rise and land subsidence foster tidal floods and permanent inundations, thus changing and limiting land use. Though many countries, including Indonesia, are aware of these phenomena, the legal status of this permanently inundated land remains unclear. Indonesia refers to this land legally as obliterated land. This qualification makes former landowners uncertain, as it does not recognize their previous land rights, and creates disputes during land acquisition.

In 2019, residents of the rural district of San Rafael Comac in the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Mexico, challenged the implementation of the 2018 Municipal Program for Sustainable Urban Development of San Andrés Cholula (MPSUD), a rapacious urban-planning policy that was negatively affecting ancestral communities—pueblos originarios—and their lands and traditions.

One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal’s (SDGs) aims is to enhance access to clean energy. In addition, other SDGs are directly related to the restoration of degraded soils to improve on-farm productivity and land management. Integrating Short Rotation Woody Crops (SRWC) for bioenergy into conventional agriculture provides opportunities for sustainable domestic energy production, rural economic development/diversification, and restoration of soil health and biodiversity.

Coastal areas are usually considered as pioneering areas for economic development and reform due to their unique geographical locations and ecological conditions. Correspondingly, rapid urbanization in coastal urban agglomerations has resulted in population concentration and land use/cover change (LUCC), leading to the decline of habitat quality and biodiversity. However, few studies have quantitatively explored the impacts of urban agglomeration expansion in coastal zones on habitat quality.

Sustainable forest land management requires measuring and monitoring soil organic carbon. Visible and near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (Vis-NIR, 350–2500 nm), although it has become an important method for predicting soil organic carbon (SOC), requires further studies and methods of analysis to realize its full potential. This study aimed to determine if the size of the study area and soil sampling density may affect the performance of Vis-NIR diffuse reflectance spectroscopy in the prediction of soil organic carbon.

ʻĀina (land) is central to Native Hawaiian culture and ways of life. The illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and annexation to the US resulted in the loss of Hawaiian crown and government land, which was placed in trust for the benefit of the Hawaiian people. These lands, now managed by the State of Hawaiʻi, were reconstituted as the Public Land Trust (PLT) with one of the articulated uses being the betterment of Native Hawaiians.