The emergence of land change science for global environmental change and sustainability

*Graduate School of Geography and Marsh Institute, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610;
^‡Department of Geography, University of Louvain, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; and
^§Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark

Edited by William C. Clark, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved September 5, 2007 (received for review May 17, 2007)

Abstract

Land change science has emerged as a fundamental component of global environmental change and sustainability research. This interdisciplinary field seeks to understand the dynamics of land cover and land use as a coupled human–environment system to address theory, concepts, models, and applications relevant to environmental and societal problems, including the intersection of the two. The major components and advances in land change are addressed: observation and monitoring; understanding the coupled system—causes, impacts, and consequences; modeling; and synthesis issues. The six articles of the special feature are introduced and situated within these components of study.

Footnotes

^†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bturner{at}clarku.edu
Author contributions: B.L.T., E.F.L., and A.R. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵ ¶ “Land transformation” refers to radical changes in land use and cover, usually over the long term, such as forest to row crop cultivation, or wetlands to urban settlement. The various estimates of these changes differ owing to the use of different metrics and measures and the uncertainties involved. Regardless, transformations are sizable as proportion of the ice-free land surface. If lands altered by human activity—lands retaining their base land cover but configured differently than in the “wildland” state—are included, a much larger estimate would result. Examples include degraded arid lands, pasture and grasslands invaded by or planted to exotic flora, and coadapted forests and grassland. Coadapted land covers are shaped and maintained by prolonged and repeated human activity, such as burning, that enlarges land use or land production: for example, annual burning that expands savanna grasses relative to woody species and enlarges food stocks for livestock and native grazers.
↵ ‖ As with estimates of land transformations and alterations, there is little doubt that human activity usurps a large proportion of terrestrial net primary productivity, but the uncertainty in the estimates remains large (16).
↵ ** Attempts are also underway to address land transitions for semi-arid lands (108).