Microbial responses to changes in land use

Background/Question/Methods
Land use change is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide. This is especially true for land use change that results in the destruction of intact forest, or "deforestation”. Deforestation is causing a loss of biological diversity on an unprecedented scale, especially in the Tropics. It is unclear how the majority of the biodiversity on Earth – microbial biodiversity – is responding to these extraordinary rates of deforestation. I will provide an overview of our current understanding of microbial responses to deforestation. I will focus, as an example, on our current research regarding the effects of deforestation on the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), bacteria and archaea within Amazon Rainforest soils. This study takes advantage of an established chronosequence of primary rainforest, pastures of various ages, and secondary rainforest to determine the effect of deforestation on the taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity of soil microorganisms, assayed using culture-independent methods.

Results/Conclusions
There is increasing evidence that deforestation significantly affects microbial diversity, and that “recovery” of microbial diversity in secondary forest soils is incomplete. For example, rarefaction curves suggest that the accumulation of AMF taxa is higher for Amazon primary forest soil relative to secondary forest soil. In addition, the community composition varies with land use; three AMF taxa were shared between primary and secondary forests, seven were found only in primary forest, and three were found exclusively in secondary forest soil. We also observed that the phylogenetic diversity of AMF is more reduced in secondary forest soils than expected given the regional pool of AMF taxa.

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The implications of stakeholders' perceptions of land for sustainable land use management in NE Ghana

There are negative implications of changes in stakeholders traditional land perceptions for sustainable land use and management in north-east Ghana. In African tenurial systems, land use was based on a local mystical view of the environment and stakeholders broad-based knowledge of the local environments. These led to sustainable resource use and management. However, in the context of current political ecology of north-east Ghana as induced by increased population growth, urbanisation, the market economy, changes in religious beliefs, and government land policies, stakeholders understandings of land have acquired even greater importance in issues of sustainable land resource use and management. A mixed methodological approach, combining both qualitative and quantitative data gathering techniques for information on stakeholders land perceptions, was used to analyse their implications for sustainable land use and management. Changes in the dynamics of stakeholders perceptions of land are partly responsible for the current state of land and environmental degradation in north-east Ghana. Policies aimed at ensuring sustainable land use and environmental management must focus on those traditional land perceptions, which encourage environmental sustainabilit

Land use in rural New Zealand: spatial land use, land-use change, and model validation

Abstract Land is an important social and economic resource. Knowing the spatial distribution of land use and the expected location of future land-use change is important to inform decision makers. This paper documents and validates the baseline land-use maps and the algorithm for spatial land-use change incorporated in the Land Use in Rural New Zealand model (LURNZ). At the time of writing, LURNZ is the only national-level land-use model of New Zealand. While developed for New Zealand, the model provides an intuitive algorithm that would be straightforward to apply to different locations and at different spatial resolutions. LURNZ is based on a heuristic model of dynamic land-use optimisation with conversion costs. It allocates land-use changes to each pixel using a combination of pixel probabilities in a deterministic algorithm and calibration to national-level changes. We simulate out of sample and compare to observed data. As a result of the model construction, we underestimate the “churn” in land use. We demonstrate that the algorithm assigns changes in land use to pixels that are similar in quality to the pixels where land-use changes are observed to occur. We also show that there is a strong positive relationship between observed territorial-authority-level dairy changes and simulated changes in dairy area

Archetypes of land transformations and trajectories of ecosystem services in mountains. [ID660]

Based on a synthesis of 51 cases of temporal changes in land use and ecosystem services within mountain landscapes, we analyze how changes in land-use intensity influence the supply of ten key services and we describe six typical archetypes. Our analysis reveals that land-use intensity is an important factor shaping these archetypes. Land-use intensification often degrades ecosystem services (eg recreation and water regulation), with the exception of services targeted by intensification (food or timber) and with differences between forest and agricultural intensification. Service degradation following intensification is not always reversed by reductions in land-use intensity (extensification)

Modelling the Impact of Transport Planning Policy Upon Land Use

In this paper the results from the validation of an integrated land use and transport model are described. The goodness-of-fit for the forecasts are considered not only for the time horizon, but also in terms of the change over time, which is a much more sensitive test. The sensitivity of the land use and transport forecasts to changes in the monetary cost of travel are examined to see to what extent the location of housing, population, employment and jobs, and the journey to work respond to such changes. The spatial effects of these changes are demonstrated by finding the land use distribution for three concentric rings. The influence of land use changes upon time and money expenditure are examined by using the relevant elements of the generalised cost functions with the trip matrices computed under three different assumptions when the monetary cost of travel is varied: keeping modal split and land use constant, keeping only land use constant, and allowing both to respond. The paper is concluded with discussion of further model improvements and applications of the model

SPATIAL DEPENDENCE AMONG COUNTY-LEVEL LAND USE CHANGES

Spatial econometric methods are used to investigate whether land use changes in one county are affected by changes in surrounding counties. Spatial dependence is hypothesized to arise from land substitution effects among neighboring counties. The estimation uses data on land use change for 1,055 counties of 12 Midwest states.Land Economics/Use,

How Does Changing Land Cover and Land Use in New Zealand relate to Land Use Capability and Slope?

Land cover and use are critical for climate change, water quality and use, biodiversity and soil conservation as well as important drivers of rural economic activity and the evolution of rural communities. The Land Use in Rural New Zealand (LURNZ) model is a simulation model that predicts overall shifts in land use at a national scale and then allocates those changes spatially. We create a new dataset that allows us to consider fine scale land cover and use on private rural land and land characteristics associated with those land covers and uses. Second, we produce some summary statistics on the land cover transitions that were observed from 1996 to 2002. We find some evidence that supports our simple model of the relationship between land use changes and observable land quality, and the use of Land Use Capability and slope in rules to simulate the location of changes in land use and cover and also identify some directions for future work.Land use, climate change, water, soil, land use capability, LURNZ, New Zealand, spatial modelling

Farm Size and Land Use Changes in Vietnam Following Land Reforms

Over the last decade the Vietnamese government has instigated land reforms that recognise the household as the basic unit of production and allocate land use rights to households. Under the 1993 Land Law these rights can be transferred, exchanged, leased, inherited, and mortgaged. This Land Law provided the foundation for the development of a market for land use rights. During 2001, 400 farm households were surveyed in four provinces in Vietnam. Along with production and consumption data, evidence was sought of land accumulation and consolidation, land use changes, and attitudes to land reform issues. Analysis of the data shows that there is an active market for land use rights, but the level of activity varies considerably between provinces. Some individual households have acquired a large percentage of their land through buying or renting activities, as distinct from land that has been allocated or inherited. A more active market appears to be associated with opportunities for land use changes which lead to more profitable production activities. Lack of available land and in some cases labour, inadequate credit access, and reluctance to sell land use rights are identified as constraints to the land use right market, rather than transaction costs and the limit on land holdings.agricultural policy, land reform, land market, Vietnam, Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Determinants of Land-Use Change In the United States 1982-1997

Changes in the use of land in the United States produce significant economic and environmental effects with important implications for a wide variety of policy issues, including protection of wildlife habitat, management of urban growth, and mitigation of global climate change. In contrast to previous descriptive and qualitative analyses of the trends in national land use, this paper uses an econometric approach to isolate the importance of historical changes in land-use profits and key government policies in determining national land-use changes from 1982 to 1997. The policies we examine are the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and total government payments to crop producers. We estimate a national-level discrete choice model of changes among the major land-use categories (crops, pasture, forest, urban, range, and CRP) with parcel-level observations of land use and land quality from the U.S.D.A. National Resources Inventory NRI) and measures of countylevel land-use net returns from a variety of sources. We then use fitted values from the econometric model to simulate land-use change from 1982 to 1997 under a series of factual and counterfactual scenarios that isolate the effects of different economic and policy factors. The simulations suggest how changes in economic returns and government policies have driven land-use changes in the past and will continue to affect nationwide land-use changes in the future. For example, we find that the introduction of the CRP and the decline in crop profits were the most significant explanatory factors driving the decline in cropland. Our results highlight some “unintended consequences” of government policies and the importance of net returns to a range of alternative land uses as determinants of land area change for each particular use.land use; econometric model; counterfactual simulation; Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)

Monitoring land use changes using geo-information : possibilities, methods and adapted techniques

Monitoring land use with geographical databases is widely used in decision-making. This report presents the possibilities, methods and adapted techniques using geo-information in monitoring land use changes. The municipality of Soest was chosen as study area and three national land use databases, viz. Top10Vector, CBS land use statistics and LGN, were used. The restrictions of geo-information for monitoring land use changes are indicated. New methods and adapted techniques improve the monitoring result considerably. Providers of geo-information, however, should coordinate on update frequencies, semantic content and spatial resolution to allow better possibilities of monitoring land use by combining data sets