Analysis of Land Use Change: Theoretical and Modeling Approaches

This Web Book provides information on basic concepts and trends in land use change, and then reviews the state of the art in land use theory and empirical modeling. It concludes by summarizing the main issues pertaining to theories and models of land use change, discusses selected issues in of a more general concern in the context of the analysis of land use change and outlines future research directions.https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/rri-web-book/1000/thumbnail.jp

Combating Land Degradation and Desertification: The Land-Use Planning Quandary

Land-use planning (LUP), an instrument of land governance, is often employed to protect land and humans against natural and human-induced hazards, strengthen the resilience of land systems, and secure their sustainability. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) underlines the critical role of appropriate local action to address the global threat of land degradation and desertification (LDD) and calls for the use of local and regional LUP to combat LDD and achieve land degradation neutrality. The paper explores the challenges of putting this call into practice. After presenting desertification and the pertinent institutional context, the paper examines whether and how LDD concerns enter the stages of the LUP process and the issues arising at each stage. LDD problem complexity, the prevailing mode of governance, and the planning style endorsed, combined with LDD awareness, knowledge and perception, value priorities, geographic particularities and historical circumstances, underlie the main challenges confronting LUP; namely, adequate representation of LDD at each stage of LUP, conflict resolution between LDD-related and development goals, need for cooperation, collaboration and coordination of numerous and diverse actors, sectors, institutions and policy domains from multiple spatial/organizational levels and uncertainty regarding present and future environmental and socio-economic change. In order to realize the integrative potential of LUP and foster its effectiveness in combating LDD at the local and regional levels, the provision of an enabling, higher-level institutional environment should be prioritized to support phrοnetic-strategic integrated LUP at lower levels, which future research should explore theoretically, methodologically and empirically

The institutional complexity of environmental policy and planning problems: the example of Mediterranean desertification

Environmental policy and planning problems are inherently complex societal problems whose solution requires the deployment of particular combinations of environmental and human resources to achieve sustainable socio-spatial development. Resources are subject, however, to diverse resource regimes. A stumbling block in devising and implementing solutions is the variance between actual resource regimes and those associated with proposed plans and policies as well as the possibility of combining them optimally. The paper explores how the institutional setting—the numerous and diverse actors and resource regimes involved—affects the output and outcomes of the principal stages of the policy and planning process, it offers proposals for institutional change and it suggests future research directions. Desertification control is analyzed as an illustrative example of a domain where institutional complexity is pronounced and crucial for the feasibility and effectiveness of policy and planning interventions.

Sustainable Development and its Indicators: Through a (Planner's) Glass Darkly

The paper evaluates the usefulness of indicators as decision support instruments in planning for sustainable development. It examines key concepts and critical issues in planning for sustainable development and reviews the development of indicators in the last two decades. It evaluates their relevance in four planning functions by means of planning-related criteria. It concludes that indicators are still a long way from making a substantial contribution to planning and proposes broad research directions to improve their contribution. The need for integrated, context-specific theories of planning situations to frame the conceptualization, operationalization and use of indicators is emphasized.

An Integrated Modeling Approach for the Study of the Impacts of Acid Deposition Control Regulations

187 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985.Acid deposition has become a serious environmental problem in the last decade. The economic repercussions of acid deposition control regulations give rise to interregional and international conflicts as to who is to bear the burden of its abatement. Responsive policy decisions have to be based on models that take into account the most important concerns of policy makers.In this study, an integrated economic-environmental-policy model has been proposed for use at the interregional level of analysis. A system of regions is assumed and the model's output refers to annual economic and environmental magnitudes. The model consists of four interlinked modules: an economic, an environmental, a cost, and a decision-making module. Exogenous forecasts from other regional and/or national economic models as well as scientific information are fed into the model. The main emphasis is on the linkages of the modules so that an integrated analysis can be performed with the model.The economic module consists of an interregional input-output model. The environmental module includes three models accounting for pollutants (sulfur dioxide and sulfate, in the present case) transport, transformation, deposition, and subsequent ecosystem acidification. The cost module includes an abatement cost and a damage cost model for the system of regions. The decision-making module consists of a set of regional profiles for each region and an optimization model.The model can be used to test alternative sulfur dioxide emissions reduction schemes (or, distributions) for the system of regions. Economic and environmental impacts are identified, evaluated and, possibly, used to modify the initially tested scheme.Another use of the model is the generation of sulfur dioxide emissions reduction schemes once the desired levels of regional economic outputs and acid deposition for each region are specified.An illustrative example of the use of some parts of the model complements the theoretical part of the study. A sensitivity analysis, using 16 scenario cases, was performed on the model. However, no conclusions could be drawn from this example given its hypothetical nature and its small size.Finally, the study pointed to future research needs and directions for the refinement of the proposed model.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Who Plans Whose Sustainability? Alternative Roles for Planners

The paper examines alternative roles for planners in planning for sustainable development. First, it outlines the particular context of the task focusing on operational questions, critical issues and sustainable development planning principles. It then explores roles for planners in this context distinguishing broadly among technician, politician and hybrid planners. It evaluates broadly each role's effectiveness and challenges, in particular decision making and political contexts. Finally, it discusses, first, the implications of these roles for planning education and identifies the main groups of skills planning schools should offer. Second, it analyses briefly the implications of these roles for planning practice in terms of the spatial/organizational level of planning, time horizon, functional planning areas, political/decision making system and planning's position in this system.

Land-use policy and planning, theorizing, and modeling: lost in translation, found in complexity?

This paper ventures an examination of the linkages among three worlds—those of land-use theorizing and modeling, and that of policy making and planning—which, despite historical and recent advances, remain comparatively poor and haunted by defective communication and problematic translation between them. It is motivated by shifts that have taken place since the late 1980s in all three worlds, away from ‘classical’ thinking (positivism, reductionism, and linear and static worldviews) and towards complex systems (CS) thinking (alternative epistemologies, holism, and nonlinear and dynamic worldviews). The principal question is whether or not CS thinking, compared to classical thinking, addresses more satisfactorily key policy and planning issues, thus holding the potential to improve communication and bridge the gaps between the three worlds. The issues examined are the representation of the sociospatial system, the land-use change process, and policy and planning intervention. After delimiting each world and the diffusion of CS thinking, the paper investigates how the classical approach and the CS approach fare in handling these issues. The analysis suggests that it is not yet possible to determine which approach is superior. The main points are summarized and CS specific and more general future research directions are indicated.

The Socio-Ecological Dynamics of Human Responses in a Land Degradation-Affected Region: The Messara Valley (Crete, Greece)

This paper applies a resilience- and assemblage-based methodology to study the socio-ecological dynamics of human responses in the land degradation-affected Messara Valley (Crete, Greece) socio-ecological system, from 1950 to 2010. It posits that thesedynamics aredriven by changes in their effectiveness, called ‘socio-ecological fit’, to serve place- and time-specific goals. The socio-ecological fit expresses the degree to which the match among all the biophysical and human components of a Response Assemblage emerging in a socio-ecological system, maintains the socio-ecological resilience of this Assemblage. The socio-ecological resilience results is gauged by synthesizing three system-level properties (Resilience, Adaptability, Transformability) shaped by lower level properties that are assessed from available data. The reported application revealed that human responses (traditional land management, agricultural modernization and subsidized agriculture) and their effectiveness were driven by prioritizing economic and technological considerations that shaped the properties, socio-ecological resilience and fit of three main Response Assemblages formed over the study period, rather than combating land degradation. Agricultural modernization did not uniformly and necessarily lead to land degradation; the situated relationships among the components of the Response Assemblages determined its effects. The fit of future options can be assessed also to support rational land use planning. Refinements in the methodology include the development of techniques to: (a) assess and synthesize the properties of different components in order to improve assessments of socio-ecological resilience and fit and (b) study relationships among the properties of Response Assemblages emerging at different levels