How Landscape Ecology Informs Global Land-Change Science and Policy

Landscape ecology is a discipline that explicitly considers the influence of time and space on the environmental patterns we observe and the processes that create them. Although many of the topics studied in landscape ecology have public policy implications, three are of particular concern: climate change; land use–land cover change (LULCC); and a particular type of LULCC, urbanization. These processes are interrelated, because LULCC is driven by both human activities (e.g., agricultural expansion and urban sprawl) and climate change (e.g., desertification). Climate change, in turn, will affect the way humans use landscapes. Interactions among these drivers of ecosystem change can have destabilizing and accelerating feedback, with consequences for human societies from local to global scales. These challenges require landscape ecologists to engage policymakers and practitioners in seeking long-term solutions, informed by an understanding of opportunities to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic drivers on ecosystems and adapt to new ecological realities

Land Change Modeling: Summer 2015 Internship with Clark Labs

My internship with Clark Labs was completed during the summer of 2015, where I worked under the direction of Dr. Ronald Eastman. As a research assistant, the responsibilities of my internship was to process data for a project that intended to develop a web application for land change modeling. I learned a lot of knowledge about land change science and GIS applications from this internship. The experience I gained will definitely increase my competitiveness in my future career. I am fully satisfied with this internship and I would recommend this internship to anybody interested in GIS and land change science. The following chapters provide details about the organization, my responsibilities and an overall assessment of the internship

Land Change Science and the STEPLand Framework : An Assessment of Its Progress

This contribution assesses a new term that is proposed to be established within Land Change Science: Spatio-TEmporal Patterns of Land ('STEPLand'). It refers to a specific workflow for analyzing land-use/land cover (LUC) patterns, identifying and modeling driving forces of LUC changes, assessing socio-environmental consequences, and contributing to defining future scenarios of land transformations. In this article, we define this framework based on a comprehensive meta-analysis of 250 selected articles published in international scientific journals from 2000 to 2019. The empirical results demonstrate that STEPLand is a consolidated protocol applied globally, and the large diversity of journals, disciplines, and countries involved shows that it is becoming ubiquitous. In this paper, the main characteristics of STEPLand are provided and discussed, demonstrating that the operational procedure can facilitate the interaction among researchers from different fields, and communication between researchers and policy makers

Approaches to interdisciplinary mixed methods research in land change science and environmental management

Combining qualitative and quantitative methods and data is crucial to understanding the complex dynamics and often interdisciplinary nature of conservation. Many conservation scientists use mixed methods, but there are a variety of mixed methods approaches, a lack of shared vocabulary, and few methodological frameworks. We reviewed articles from 2 conservation-related fields that often incorporate qualitative and quantitative methods: land-change science (n= 16) and environmental management (n= 16). We examined how authors of these studies approached mixed-methods research by coding key methodological characteristics, including relationships between method objectives, extent of integration, iterative interactions between methods, and justification for use of mixed methods. Using these characteristics, we created a typology with the goal of improving understanding of how researchers studying land-change science and environmental management approach interdisciplinary mixed methods research. We found 5 types of mixed methods approaches, which we termed simple nested, informed nested, simple parallel, unidirectional synthesis, and bidirectional synthesis. Methods and data sources were often used to address different research questions within a project, and only around half of the reviewed papers methodologically integrated different forms of data. Most authors used one method to inform the other rather than both informing one another. Very few articles used methodological iteration. Each methodological type has certain epistemological implications, such as the disciplinary reach of the research and the capacity for knowledge creation through the exchange of information between distinct methodologies. To exemplify a research design that can lead to multi-dimensional knowledge production, we provide a methodological framework that bidirectionally integrates and iterates qualitative and quantitative methods

Essays on the challenges of global land change science

This dissertation considers selected economic aspects of global land change science. The first set of three papers analyses different aspects of the sustainability regulation within the European biofuel policy. The first paper analyses the greenhouse gas balance of biofuels when taking into account direct land use change. The second paper revises the aspect of indirect land use change by evaluating approaches for quantifying indirect land use change and related policy proposals. The third paper analyses policy instruments for reducing emissions from land use change caused by biofuels in a case study for Sumatra and Kalimantan based on a carbon map. The forth paper analyzes the heterogeneity in agricultural productivity of Brazilian agriculture by applying a latent common factor model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity. The fifth paper analyses the suitability of satellite based night light data as a proxy for regional growth in GDP

The coupling of South American soybean and cattle production frontiers: new challenges for conservation policy and land change science

Different drivers and places of land use change in South America have often been studied in isolation. Evidence suggests, however, that in many instances, both places and drivers are becoming increasingly interconnected. The growing diversification and internationalization of agricultural commodity chains is creating new linkages across production frontiers and sectors that have important implications for conservation. In this article, we explore the implications of the sectoral and geographical coupling of soybean and cattle production frontiers for forest conservation in South America, with particular attention to the potential for policy-induced deforestation leakage. We conclude that the existence of coupled frontiers creates a need for more actor-centered approaches to conservation policy and research.Fil: Gasparri, Nestor Ignacio. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo. Instituto de Ecología Regional; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Le Polain de Waroux, Yann. University Of Stanford; Estados Unido

Demonstrating Change with Astronaut Photography Using Object Based Image Analysis

Every day, hundreds of images of Earth flood the Crew Earth Observations database as astronauts use hand held digital cameras to capture spectacular frames from the International Space Station. The variety of resolutions and perspectives provide a template for assessing land cover change over decades. We will focus on urban growth in the second fastest growing city in the nation, Houston, TX, using Object-Based Image Analysis. This research will contribute to the land change science community, integrated resource planning, and monitoring of the rapid rate of urban sprawl

Border Integrations: The Fusion of Political Ecology and Land Change Science to Inform and Contest Transboundary Integration in Amazonia

In the southwestern Amazon lies the Sierra del Divisor, an isolated cluster of mist-covered peaks and ridges rising out of the steamy lowland rainforest. The forests of these fiercely dissected crests and valleys still ring with the low grunt of jaguar and the thunderous clacks of hundreds-strong herds of whitelipped peccaries, while the canopy sways with troops of the rare red Uakari monkey. This biodiversity inspired the Serra do Divisor National Park, and its transboundary sister reserve, but these forests are also home to humans: the descendants of Asheninka warriors and rubber tappers, a re-emergent Nawa people, I and most elusive, the uncontacted lsconahua. These homelands and ecosystems are crisscrossed with the ephemeral scars made by more recent arrivals: loggers, miners, and drug traffickers. However, the most important line in the Sierra del Divisor is the border itself, the international boundary that follows the Sierra\u27s ridge dividing Peru\u27s Ucayali river basin from Brazil\u27s Jurua basin in the state of Acre. Relatively equidistant from the boundary ridgeline lie rwo cities, Ucayali\u27s capital of Pucallpa, and Western Acre\u27s commercial center, Cruzeiro do Sul. Both cities are the end of the road for their country\u27s nerwork of thoroughfares. For now. Planners and government officials increasingly view the 160 kilometers of forest separating the rwo cities as a temporary obstruction to continental integration. A road connecting the rwo cities would bisect the border and have an impact on flora, fauna, and people. This chapter documents the struggle against this road, a struggle to defend local livelihoods, flora, and fauna from a development initiative pushed at continental, national, and regional scales. In particular, we analyze the synergy of two divergent analytical approaches, land change science (LCS) and political ecology (PE), to gain the best understanding of the impacts of a transboundary road bridging the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon between the cities of Cruzeiro do Sui and Pucallpa

Reconstructing contested landscapes : Dynamics, drivers and political framings of land use and land cover change, watershed transformations and coastal sedimentation in Java, Indonesia

The dissertation examines land use, watershed, and coastal dynamics, their drivers, and related environmental governance and management approaches in Java, Indonesia. It questions long-standing narratives about the drivers of high river sediment loads and coastal sedimentation and contributes new insight into the dynamics and causes of these processes. The research thus deconstructs political discourses about watershed and coastal change and reconstructs these dynamics. It combines political ecology, land change science and historical cartography and utilises a broad range of related methods to directly link physical environmental changes with (historically rooted) struggles over resource access and control, and related political framings and modes of action. The most insightful findings of this research were generated at the intersections of the different themes, approaches and methods