text: Land http://www.mdpi.com/journal/land Latest open access articles published in Land at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/land http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/4/33 Genetically modified (GM) crops have single or multiple genes introduced to obtain crop characteristics that cannot be obtained through conventional breeding. Pollen mediated gene flow from GM to non-GM crops causes some crops planted as non-GM to become GM, and this imposes economic losses on farmers who planted a non-GM crop but then have to sell the harvest on a GM market. The economic losses that result when both crops are grown together depend on the institutional arrangements and the type of property rights in place. We analyze how the spatial heterogeneity of a farmer's fields affects the land allocation between buffers, the GM, and the non-GM crop based on cross-pollination and initial assignment of property rights. Greater spatial heterogeneity reduces the possibility of coexistence of crops on the landscape and increases the economic losses. Buffer zones enforced to reduce cross-pollination result in less coexistence on heterogeneous landscapes. Land 2016-10-17 5 4 Article 10.3390/land5040033 33 2073-445X 2016-10-17 doi: 10.3390/land5040033 Mattia Mancini Kent Kovacs Eric Wailes Jennie Popp http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/4/32 This paper reviews 91 recent empirical and theoretical studies that analyzed land-use change at the farm-household level. The review builds on a conceptual framework of land-use change drivers and conducts a meta-analysis. Results show that the conversion of forests into cultivated land or grassland, mainly used for agriculture or ranching, are most frequently analyzed. Only a small number of studies consider the transition of wetlands for agriculture and few cases deal with the conversion from agriculture into protected zones. Moreover, interactions between drivers add to the complexity of land-use change processes. These interrelationships are conditioned by institutions and policies. In particular, the market-oriented reforms adopted by many developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s seem to have had an important role in altering land use, while impacts of more recent policies need to be better explored. Many studies rely on small samples and face problems of internal validity. Despite these weaknesses, the literature points at micro-level economic growth, for example in income and capital endowments, as a strong catalyst of human induced land-use change. However, the review suggests that—across the different studies and cases—there is considerable heterogeneity in the relationship between these factors and land-use change. Land 2016-10-13 5 4 Review 10.3390/land5040032 32 2073-445X 2016-10-13 doi: 10.3390/land5040032 Elisabeth Hettig Jann Lay Kacana Sipangule http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/4/31 This research was carried out in a dense tropical forest region with the objective of improving the biomass estimates by a combination of ALOS-2 SAR, Landsat 8 optical, and field plots data. Using forest inventory based biomass data, the performance of different parameters from the two sensors was evaluated. The regression analysis with the biomass data showed that the backscatter from forest object (σ°forest) obtained from the SAR data was more sensitive to the biomass than HV polarization, SAR textures, and maximum NDVI parameters. However, the combination of the maximum NDVI from optical data, SAR textures from HV polarization, and σ°forest improved estimates of the biomass. The best model derived by the combination of multiple parameters from ALOS-2 SAR and Landsat 8 data was validated with inventory data. Then, the best validated model was used to produce an up-to-date biomass map for 2015 in Yok Don National Park, which is an important conservation area in Vietnam. The validation results showed that 74% of the variation of in biomass could be explained by our model. Land 2016-09-27 5 4 Article 10.3390/land5040031 31 2073-445X 2016-09-27 doi: 10.3390/land5040031 Luong Viet Nguyen Ryutaro Tateishi Akihiko Kondoh Ram Sharma Hoan Thanh Nguyen Tu Trong To Dinh Ho Tong Minh http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/30 New England forests provide numerous benefits to the region's residents, but are undergoing rapid development. We used boosted regression tree analysis (BRT) to assess geographic predictors of forest loss to development between 2001 and 2011. BRT combines classification and regression trees with machine learning to generate non-parametric statistical models that can capture non-linear relationships. Based on National Land Cover Database (NLCD) maps of land cover change, we assessed the importance of the biophysical and social variables selected for full region coverage and minimal collinearity in predicting forest loss to development, specifically: elevation, slope, distance to roads, density of highways, distance to built land, distance to cities, population density, change in population density, relative change in population density, population per housing unit, median income, state, land ownership categories and county classification as recreation or retirement counties. The resulting models explained 6.9% of the variation for 2001–2011, 4.5% for 2001–2006 and 1.8% for 2006–2011, fairly high values given the complexity of factors predicting land development and the high resolution of the spatial datasets (30-m pixels). The two most important variables in the BRT were "population density" and "distance to road", which together made up 55.5% of the variation for 2001–2011, 49.4% for 2001–2006 and 42.9% for 2006–2011. The lower predictive power for 2006–2011 may reflect reduced development due to the "Great Recession". From our models, we generated high-resolution probability surfaces, which can provide a key input for simulation models of forest and land cover change. Land 2016-09-19 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030030 30 2073-445X 2016-09-19 doi: 10.3390/land5030030 Alexandra Thorn Jonathan Thompson Joshua Plisinski http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/29 Land systems are characterised by many feedbacks that can result in complex system behaviour. We defined feedbacks as the two-way influences between the land use system and a related system (e.g., climate, soils and markets), both of which are encompassed by the land system. Land models that include feedbacks thus probably more accurately mimic how land systems respond to, e.g., policy or climate change. However, representing feedbacks in land models is a challenge. We reviewed articles incorporating feedbacks into land models and analysed each with predefined indicators. We found that (1) most modelled feedbacks couple land use systems with transport, soil and market systems, while only a few include feedbacks between land use and social systems or climate systems; (2) equation-based land use models that follow a top-down approach prevail; and (3) feedbacks' effects on system behaviour remain relatively unexplored. We recommend that land system modellers (1) consider feedbacks between land use systems and social systems; (2) adopt (bottom-up) approaches suited to incorporating spatial heterogeneity and better representing land use decision-making; and (3) pay more attention to nonlinear system behaviour and its implications for land system management and policy. Land 2016-09-11 5 3 Review 10.3390/land5030029 29 2073-445X 2016-09-11 doi: 10.3390/land5030029 Yang Chen Martha Bakker Arend Ligtenberg Arnold Bregt http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/28 Urban agriculture, a dynamic multifunctional phenomenon, affects the spatial diversification of urban land use, its valorization and its governance. Literature acknowledges its contribution to the development of sustainable cities. The dimension and extent of this contribution depends significantly on the particular form and function of urban agriculture. However, the complexity of interests and dimensions is insufficiently covered by theory. This paper proposes a typology for urban agriculture, supporting both theory building and practical decision processes. We reviewed and mapped the diversity of the types of agriculture found along three beneficial dimensions (self-supply, socio-cultural, commercial) for product distribution scale and actors. We distinguish between ideal types, subtypes and mixed types. Our intention is to include a dynamic perspective in the typology of urban agricultural land use because transition processes between types are observable due to the existence of complex motivations and influences. In a pilot study of 52 urban agriculture initiatives in Germany, we tested the validity of the typology and discussed it with stakeholders, proving novelty and relevance for profiling discussions. Land 2016-08-17 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030028 28 2073-445X 2016-08-17 doi: 10.3390/land5030028 Thomas Krikser Annette Piorr Regine Berges Ina Opitz http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/27 This research examines the impact of forest management regimes, with various degrees of restriction, on forest conservation in a dry deciduous Indian forest landscape. Forest change is mapped using Landsat satellite images from 1977, 1990, 1999, and 2011. The landscape studied has lost 1478 km2 of dense forest cover between 1977 and 2011, with a maximum loss of 1002 km2 of dense forest between 1977 and 1990. The number of protected forest areas has increased, concomitant with an increase in restrictions on forest access and use outside protected areas. Interviews with residents of 20 randomly selected villages indicate that in the absence of alternatives, rather than reducing their dependence on forests, communities appear to shift their use to other, less protected patches of forest. Pressure shifts seem to be taking place as a consequence of increasing protection, from within protected areas to forests outside, leading to the creation of protected but isolated forest islands within a matrix of overall deforestation, and increased conflict between local residents and forest managers. A broader landscape vision for forest management needs to be developed, that involves local communities with forest protection and enables their decision-making on forest management outside strict protected areas. Land 2016-08-12 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030027 27 2073-445X 2016-08-12 doi: 10.3390/land5030027 Shivani Agarwal Harini Nagendra Rucha Ghate http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/25 Land use and land cover (LULC) patterns play an important role in the establishment and spread of invasive plants. Understanding LULC changes is useful for early detection and management of land-use change to reduce the spread of invasive species. The primary objective of this study is to analyze and predict LULC changes in Connecticut. LULC maps for 1996, 2001 and 2006 were selected to analyze past land cover changes, and then potential LULC distribution in 2018 was predicted using the Multi-Layer Perceptron Markov Chain (MLP_MC) model. This study shows that the total area of forest has been decreasing, mainly caused by urban development and other human activity in Connecticut. The model predicts that the study area will lose 5535 ha of deciduous forest and gain 3502 ha of built-up area from 2006 to 2018. Moreover, forests near built-up areas and agriculture lands appear to be more vulnerable to conversion. Changes in LULC may result in subtle spatial shifts in invasion risk by an abundant invasive shrub, Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii). The gain of developed areas at the landscape scale was most closely linked to increased future invasion risk. Our findings suggest that the forest conversion needs to be controlled and well managed to help mitigate future invasion risk. Land 2016-07-28 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030025 25 2073-445X 2016-07-28 doi: 10.3390/land5030025 Wenjie Wang Chuanrong Zhang Jenica Allen Weidong Li Mark Boyer Kathleen Segerson John Silander http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/26 Birds are an important part of the agricultural landscape, as having nature value, but also as pest control agents and bio-indicators for the health of the environment. Here we look at linear non-crop elements in agricultural areas as a potential source of food for nestlings of avian species. We measured invertebrate availability as it relates to structural complexity at the local and landscape levels in three counties in central Illinois. Invertebrates were measured with taxonomic diversity, abundance, and estimated biomass during spring of 2012 and 2013. Our study shows that easily modifiable field edge characteristics have the greatest impact on invertebrate diversity and abundance, as compared to field and landscape features. This finding shows that a potential invertebrate food source as measured by both diversity and biomass, may be easily enhanced without changes to agricultural practices. Land 2016-07-28 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030026 26 2073-445X 2016-07-28 doi: 10.3390/land5030026 Tracy Evans Meredith Mahoney Everett Cashatt Geert de Snoo C.J.M. Musters http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/24 Smallholder farming in the Brazilian Amazon has changed markedly over the last few decades, following a pervasive swing to cattle production observed across the basin. These changes have brought opportunities for accumulating a modicum of wealth that were not available in the early stages of colonization. At the same time, they have reconfigured livelihood systems away from diversified agriculture to a strong engagement with the cattle economy. They are also exposing smallholders to new forms of exploitation by transnational corporations, seeking to pass risk upstream to less powerful economic agents who provide inputs to production, such as calves. The case of Southeastern Pará provides a natural laboratory for investigating such phenomena, which the article considers through the presentation of data from field research conducted in the region over the past decade. Here, agrarian reform efforts have been particularly intense, and social movements have often espoused a green rhetoric in favor of diversified agriculture, even though smallholders show little interest in anything but cattle. Household level incentives promote Amazonia's emergent cattle economy, demonstrating how global production networks have reached into the basin, where production relations between smallholders provisioning calves to large ranching operations often resemble what has been referred to in the literature as "contract farming" land grabs, given the exploitive terms of trade. Land 2016-07-07 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030024 24 2073-445X 2016-07-07 doi: 10.3390/land5030024 Ritaumaria Pereira Cynthia Simmons Robert Walker http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/23 Urban ecosystems are carrying an extinction debt. Mitigating this debt will require the development of a predictive framework that improves our understanding of the factors causing decline of native biodiversity in urban areas. I argue that nitrogen is a common currency around which such a predictive framework could be built. I first summarise the evidence that shows the probable extent of nitrogen enrichment in urban ecosystems. I then review the body of empirical evidence that describes how nitrogen enrichment affects ecosystem process and function. By unifying these two bodies of empirical evidence, I generate a series of testable hypotheses that may allow for a better understanding of native biodiversity loss in urban areas. Land 2016-07-05 5 3 Hypothesis 10.3390/land5030023 23 2073-445X 2016-07-05 doi: 10.3390/land5030023 Brenton Ladd http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/22 Few land disturbances impact watersheds at the scale and extent of mountaintop removal mining (MTM). This practice removes forests, soils and bedrock to gain access to underground coal that results in likely permanent and wholesale changes that impact catchment hydrology, geochemistry and ecosystem health. MTM is the dominant driver of land cover changes in the central Appalachian Mountains region of the United States, converting forests to mine lands and burying headwater streams. Despite its dominance on the landscape, determining the hydrological impacts of MTM is complicated by underground coal mines that significantly alter groundwater hydrology. To provide insight into how coal mining impacts headwater catchments, we compared the hydrologic responses of an MTM and forested catchment using event rainfall-runoff analysis, modeling and isotopic approaches. Despite similar rainfall characteristics, hydrology in the two catchments differed in significant ways, but both catchments demonstrated threshold-mediated hydrologic behavior that was attributed to transient storage and the release of runoff from underground mines. Results suggest that underground mines are important controls for runoff generation in both obviously disturbed and seemingly undisturbed catchments and interact in uncertain ways with disturbance from MTM. This paper summarizes our results and demonstrates the complexity of catchment hydrology in the MTM region. Land 2016-07-05 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030022 22 2073-445X 2016-07-05 doi: 10.3390/land5030022 Andrew Miller Nicolas Zégre http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/21 Botswana is a semi-arid, middle-income African country that imports 90 percent of its food. Despite its relative prosperity, Botswana also suffers from one of the highest measures of income inequality in the world, persistent poverty, and relatively high levels of food insecurity. The objective of this paper is to explore how political economy, climate change and livelihood dynamics are synergistically impacting household food security. The major finding is that the marginalization of smallholder farming in Botswana has as much or more to do with domestic, regional and international political economy as it does with climate change. As such, international efforts to support climate change adaptation in Botswana will have a limited effect on smallholder farming livelihoods and rural food security unless such efforts take account of political economic constraints. Effective support must be based on a grounded understanding of the real drivers of marginalization and food insecurity. One initiative that merits further exploration is the government's backyard gardening initiative, which could be viewed as a pro-poor climate adaptation strategy. The findings of this paper are based on semi-structured interviews with policymakers and surveys with urban, peri-urban and rural households undertaken in 2012 and 2015. Land 2016-06-27 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030021 21 2073-445X 2016-06-27 doi: 10.3390/land5030021 William Moseley http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/19 Medium-scale farms have become a major force in Malawi's agricultural sector. Malawi's most recent official agricultural survey indicates that these account for over a quarter of all land under cultivation in Malawi. This study explores the causes and multifaceted consequences of the rising importance of medium-scale farms in Malawi. We identify the characteristics and pathways of entry into farming based on surveys of 300 medium-scale farmers undertaken in 2014 in the districts of Mchinji, Kasungu and Lilongwe. The area of land acquired by medium-scale farmers in these three districts is found to have almost doubled between 2000 and 2015. Just over half of the medium-scale farmers represent cases of successful expansion out of small-scale farming status; the other significant proportion of medium-scale farmers are found to be urban-based professionals, entrepreneurs and/or civil servants who acquired land, some very recently, and started farming in mid-life. We also find that a significant portion of the land acquired by medium-scale farmers was utilized by others prior to acquisition, that most of the acquired land was under customary tenure, and that the current owners were often successful in transferring the ownership structure of the acquired land to a long-term leaseholding with a title deed. The study finds that, instead of just strong endogenous growth of small-scale famers as a route for the emergence of medium-scale farms, significant farm consolidation is occurring through land acquisitions, often by urban-based people. The effects of farmland acquisitions by domestic investors on the country's primary development goals, such as food security, poverty reduction and employment, are not yet clear, though some trends appear to be emerging. We consider future research questions that may more fully shed light on the implications of policies that would continue to promote land acquisitions by medium-scale farms. Land 2016-06-24 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030019 19 2073-445X 2016-06-24 doi: 10.3390/land5030019 Ward Anseeuw Thomas Jayne Richard Kachule John Kotsopoulos http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/3/20 The poverty and environmental degradation vicious circle hypothesis considers the poor as agents and victims of environmentally degrading activities. Despite some studies, however, there still has not been a sufficient empirical examination of the poverty-environment nexus. Based on participatory poverty assessment (PPA) methods with two hundred farm households categorized by wealth status in southern Burkina Faso, six indicators of environmental degradation and a set of land management practices were examined to answer the following questions: (i) Which households (non-poor, fairly-poor, or poorest) are responsible for environmental degradation? (ii) Does poverty constrain adoption of land management practices considered to improve the land? Results indicate deforestation is highest for non-poor farmers, and non-poor and fairly-poor farmers have higher rates of overgrazing. In addition, the entire non-poor group, mainly recent migrants to the area, occupy borrowed lands with tenure perceived as insecure, considered by farmers to be a disincentive for assisted natural regeneration of vegetation. Thus, non-poor and fairly-poor farmers participate most in activities locally identified as environmentally degrading, and the former contribute more than the latter. On the other hand, adoption of land management practices considered to improve the land is relatively low amongst the poorest farmers. Land 2016-06-24 5 3 Article 10.3390/land5030020 20 2073-445X 2016-06-24 doi: 10.3390/land5030020 Daniel Etongo Ida Djenontin Markku Kanninen http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/18 The current Amazon landscape consists of heterogeneous mosaics formed by interactions between the original forest and productive activities. Recognizing and quantifying the characteristics of these landscapes is essential for understanding agricultural production chains, assessing the impact of policies, and in planning future actions. Our main objective was to construct the regionalization of agricultural production for Rondônia State (Brazilian Amazon) at the municipal level. We adopted a decision tree approach, using land use maps derived from remote sensing data (PRODES and TerraClass) combined with socioeconomic data. The decision trees allowed us to allocate municipalities to one of five agricultural production systems: (i) coexistence of livestock production and intensive agriculture; (ii) semi-intensive beef and milk production; (iii) semi-intensive beef production; (iv) intensive beef and milk production, and; (v) intensive beef production. These production systems are, respectively, linked to mechanized agriculture (i), traditional cattle farming with low management, with (ii) or without (iii) a significant presence of dairy farming, and to more intensive livestock farming with (iv) or without (v) a significant presence of dairy farming. The municipalities and associated production systems were then characterized using a wide variety of quantitative metrics grouped into four dimensions: (i) agricultural production; (ii) economics; (iii) territorial configuration, and; (iv) social characteristics. We found that production systems linked to mechanized agriculture predominate in the south of the state, while intensive farming is mainly found in the center of the state. Semi-intensive livestock farming is mainly located close to the southwest frontier and in the north of the state, where human occupation of the territory is not fully consolidated. This distributional pattern reflects the origins of the agricultural production system of Rondônia. Moreover, the characterization of the production systems provides insights into the pattern of occupation of the Amazon and the socioeconomic consequences of continuing agricultural expansion. Land 2016-06-22 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020018 18 2073-445X 2016-06-22 doi: 10.3390/land5020018 Cláudio Almeida Moisés Mourão Nadine Dessay Anne-Elisabeth Lacques Antônio Monteiro Laurent Durieux Adriano Venturieri Frédérique Seyler http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/17 European agricultural landscapes have been shaped by humans to produce marketable private goods such as food, feed, fiber and timber. Land-use intensification to increase provisioning services in such productive landscapes alters the capacity of ecosystems to supply other services (often public goods and services) that are also vital for human wellbeing. However, the interactions, synergies and trade-offs among ecosystem services are poorly understood. We assessed the spatial distribution of the services carbon storage, sediment regulation, water yield, crop production, timber supply, and outdoor recreation in the counties Wetterau and Vogelsberg (Hesse, Germany). These counties represent a gradient from intensive arable land use to more extensive mixed land use systems with domination of grassland and forests. Spatially explicit models were used to map the location and quantity of service supply. We addressed the following questions: (1) Where are areas of high and low supply of individual and multiple ecosystem services? (2) Where do the strongest trade-offs and synergies between different services occur? Our results show a pronounced spatial aggregation of different ecosystem services, with locations where at least four services are being supplied at high levels occupying only 5% of the landscape. Indicators for water provision, timber supply, carbon storage, erosion control, and outdoor recreation are positively related to each other, but this relationship is influenced by the trade-offs associated with the ecosystem service food production. Optimization of ecosystem services at the landscape scale has to take these patterns into account. Land 2016-06-22 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020017 17 2073-445X 2016-06-22 doi: 10.3390/land5020017 Andrea Früh-Müller Stefan Hotes Lutz Breuer Volkmar Wolters Thomas Koellner http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/16 Current and future impacts of climate change include increasing variability in a number of biophysical processes, such as temperature, precipitation, and flooding. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested that Southern Africa is particularly vulnerable to the anticipated impacts from global climate change and that social and ecological systems in the region will be disrupted and likely transformed in future decades. This article engages with current research within geography and cognate disciplines on the possibilities for responsive livelihoods within socio-ecological systems experiencing biophysical change. The paper draws from an ongoing research project that is evaluating perceptions of environmental change, specifically of precipitation and flooding dynamics, in order to understand social responses. We report on the findings from qualitative interviewing conducted in 2010 and 2011 in the communities of Etsha 1, Etsha 6, and Etsha 13 within the Okavango Delta of Botswana. While flooding and precipitation patterns have been dynamic and spatially differentiated, some livelihood systems have proven rigid in their capacity to enable adaptive responses. We assert this demonstrates the need for detailed research on livelihood dynamics to support adjustments to biophysical variability within socio-ecological systems experiencing change. Land 2016-06-11 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020016 16 2073-445X 2016-06-11 doi: 10.3390/land5020016 Brian King Jamie Shinn Kelley Crews Kenneth Young http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/15 Wetlands provide a diverse range of ecosystem services supporting livelihoods of many people. Despite their value, wetlands are continuously being degraded. There is scant information on individual wetlands, people's dependency and their exploitation at a local scale. We therefore assessed wetland ecosystem services, the drivers of change and impacts of those drivers on ecosystem services and people's dependency through a case study of the Maguri-Motapung Beel wetlands of Assam, India. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and community workshops. The analyses showed a total of 29 ecosystem services, and high dependency on these with five out of seven livelihood strategies sourced from ecosystem services. Over-exploitation of wetland resources and siltation were reported as the major direct drivers of change with impacts on both ecosystem services and people's livelihoods. Drastic decreases in availability of thatch, fish stocks, fodder and tourism were observed. This suggests that there is an urgent need for a comprehensive participatory management plan. Actions are needed to maintain the Maguri-Motapung Beel wetlands and the flow of services in order to sustain people's livelihoods in the area. With an estimated 50% global loss of wetlands in the last century and the loss of 5,000 square kilometers a year in Asia alone, the loss of ecosystem services and livelihood impacts shown in our study may be typical of what is occurring in the region and perhaps globally. Land 2016-06-03 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020015 15 2073-445X 2016-06-03 doi: 10.3390/land5020015 Laxmi Bhatta Sunita Chaudhary Anju Pandit Himlal Baral Partha Das Nigel Stork http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/14 This paper consists of a review of existing literature relating to Incorporated Land Groups in Papua New Guinea (PNG), followed by a case study of two urban incorporated land groups (ILGs) in the city of Lae. The paper is an attempt at assessing the sustainability of ILGs in the country. The challenges facing the ILGs have heightened public fears that the land groups may not be sustainable. Based on the argument in previous studies that the ILGs are not sustainable, the paper used primary data from two separate questionnaire surveys of randomly selected ILG landowners (including legal settlers) and ILG stakeholders to investigate the problem. The combined sample size of 129 respondents (32.7%) was representative of the total ILG population, while a total of 25 indicators were used to test the respondents' perceptions regarding ILG sustainability. Findings reveal that only one of the indicators received the positive support of the stakeholders, while no indicator was supported by the landowners. This suggests that the ILGs in PNG are not sustainable legal entities. This dilemma is a consequence of the challenges facing the ILGs, including the issues of corruption in the Lands Department, illiteracy among landowners, poor publicity given to ILGs' functions, and the dysfunctional ILG legal framework. Land 2016-05-31 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020014 14 2073-445X 2016-05-31 doi: 10.3390/land5020014 Lepani Karigawa Jacob Babarinde Suman Holis http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/13 In this Special Issue on "Agent-Based Modelling and Landscape Change" we aimed to bring together articles that showcase innovative uses of agent-based models (ABMs) for investigating and explaining landscape change and dynamics.[...] Land 2016-05-20 5 2 Editorial 10.3390/land5020013 13 2073-445X 2016-05-20 doi: 10.3390/land5020013 James Millington John Wainwright http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/12 Brazil's Cerrado is a highly diverse ecosystem and it provides critical habitat for many species. Cerrado habitats have suffered significant degradation and decline over the past decades due to expansion of cash crops and livestock farming across South America. Approximately 1,800,000 km2 of the Cerrado remain in Brazil, but detailed maps and conservation assessments of the Cerrado are lacking. We developed a land cover classification for the Cerrado, focusing on the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which may also be used to map critical habitat for endangered species. We used a Random Forest algorithm to perform a supervised classification on a set of Landsat 8 images. To determine habitat fragmentation for the Cerrado, we used Fragstats. A habitat connectivity analysis was performed using Linkage Mapper. Our final classification had an overall accuracy of 88%. Our classification produced higher accuracies (72%) in predicting Cerrado than existing government maps. We found that remaining Cerrado habitats were severely fragmented. Four potential corridors were identified in the southwest of Mato Grosso do Sul, where large Cerrado patches are located. Only two large patches remain in Mato Grosso do Sul: one within the Kadiwéu Indian Reserve, and one near the southeastern edge of the Pantanal-dominated landscape. These results are alarming for rare species requiring larger tracts of habitat such as the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus). Land 2016-05-19 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020012 12 2073-445X 2016-05-19 doi: 10.3390/land5020012 Jason Reynolds Kathryn Wesson Arnaud Desbiez Jose Ochoa-Quintero Peter Leimgruber http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/11 Land-titling programs, land and forest allocation programs, and projects on state-allocated land for development and investment in Laos have been key drivers of change in land tenure. These have triggered major shifts in land use rights, from customary, to temporary, and then to permanent land use rights. This article explores how government programs to grant land use rights to individual households have affected the way people have been able to acquire and secure land tenure. For our case study, we selected the village of Napo, the target of many land tenure changes in the past four decades. We collected data from district offices, group discussions with village organizations, and interviews with selected households. The study shows how land use rights shifted over time and reveals that households obtained most of their agricultural land and forestland through a claim process. Original households were mainly land claimers, while migrants were land buyers. The process of formalization and allocation of tenure triggered inequality among households. Attention is needed in future land governance and tenure reforms in order to safeguard the land use rights of local people in an equitable manner. Land 2016-04-29 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020011 11 2073-445X 2016-04-29 doi: 10.3390/land5020011 Saykham Boutthavong Kimihiko Hyakumura Makoto Ehara Takahiro Fujiwara http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/10 Scientific and policy interest in the biological diversity of agriculture (agrobiodiversity) is expanding amid global socioeconomic and environmental changes and sustainability interests. The majority of global agrobiodiversity is produced in smallholder food-growing. We use meta-analyses in an integrated framework to examine the interactions of smallholder agrobiodiversity with: (1) livelihood processes, especially migration, including impacts on agrobiodiversity as well as the interconnected resource systems of soil, water, and uncultivated habitats; and (2) plant-soil ecological systems. We hypothesize these interactions depend on: (1) scope of livelihood diversification and type resource system; and (2) plant residues and above-/belowground component ecological specificity. Findings show: (1) livelihood diversification is linked to varied environmental factors that range from rampant degradation to enhancing sustainability; and (2) significant ecological coupling of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity (AGSOBIO assemblages). The environmental impacts of livelihood interactions correspond to variation of diversification (migration, on-farm diversification) and resource system (i.e., agrobiodiversity per se, soil, water). Our findings also reveal mutually dependent interactions of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity. Results identify livelihood diversification-induced reduction of environmental resource quality with lagged agrobiodiversity declines as a potentially major avenue of global change. Our contribution re-frames livelihood interactions to include both agrobiodiversity and ecological systems. We discuss this integrated social-environmental re-framing through the proposed spatial geographic schema of regional agri-food spaces with distinctive matrices of livelihood strategies and relations to biodiversity and resources. This re-framing can be used to integrate livelihood, agrobiodiversity, and ecological analysis and to guide policy and scientific approaches for sustainability in agriculture and food-growing. Land 2016-04-21 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020010 10 2073-445X 2016-04-21 doi: 10.3390/land5020010 Karl Zimmerer Steven Vanek http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/9 Land use—with a special focus on agriculture—is increasingly influenced by globalization and external driving forces, causing farmers to seek opportunities to develop efficient, large-scale production systems.[...] Land 2016-04-20 5 2 Editorial 10.3390/land5020009 9 2073-445X 2016-04-20 doi: 10.3390/land5020009 Benjamin Burkhard Stefan Hotes Hubert Wiggering http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/8 The notion that the formal titling and individualization of land rights in developing countries lead to higher investments in land and agricultural productivity holds sway in academic and development circles. In this paper, this notion is analyzed based on a comparative study of land reform programs and their implications for access to land, credit, and agricultural investments in Ghana, Kenya, and Vietnam. It focuses on how different access routes to land influence access to credit, and the transaction costs of land reform programs for agricultural investments. The paper concludes that in developing countries, the transaction costs of land reforms for investments can significantly increase if the influence of power is not addressed in order to reduce unequal access to land. The practical implementation of land reform is influenced by many factors, including the control on political power. Thus, measures must accompany implementation to check the use of power to derail land reform objectives. Moreover, the paper supports the argument that land reforms should be implemented in their local contexts so as to have positive effects on agriculture. Land 2016-03-29 5 2 Review 10.3390/land5020008 8 2073-445X 2016-03-29 doi: 10.3390/land5020008 Peter Narh Cosmas Lambini Matthew Sabbi Van Pham Trung Nguyen http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/2/7 The production of soy is one of the most important economic activities in the Brazilian Amazon, though the expansion of this industry has come at the cost of huge swaths of forest. Since 2006, the private firms that buy and trade soybeans globally have assumed a key role in ensuring that soy producers comply with forest protection policies, including the Soy Moratorium and public policies banning the use of illegally deforested land. We used evidence from field interviews and a GIS of property boundaries and soy-production areas to describe the private sector governance process and to characterize the variety of property arrangements underlying soy production in Mato Grosso, the leading soy-producing state in the Brazilian Amazon. These increasingly complex property arrangements include ownership of multiple properties by a single producer, use of rental properties owned by others, and soy and cattle production on a single property. This complexity could create loopholes allowing soy associated with deforestation to enter the supply chain. Comprehensive soy-governance strategies that include more robust procedures for verifying the provenance of soy across all properties, that account for the entire property rather than only the area planted to soy, and that use more transparent verification systems could achieve greater reductions in deforestation. Land 2016-03-24 5 2 Article 10.3390/land5020007 7 2073-445X 2016-03-24 doi: 10.3390/land5020007 Lisa Rausch Holly Gibbs http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/1/6 As calls for bolstering ecosystem services from croplands have grown more insistent during the past two decades, the search for ways to foster these agriculture-sustaining services has become more urgent. In this context we examine by means of a meta-analysis the argument, proposed by Robert McC. Netting, that small-scale, mixed crop-livestock farming, a common livelihood among poor rural peoples, leads to environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. As predicted, mixed crop-livestock farms exhibit more sustainable practices, but, contrary to predictions, a small scale of operation does not predict sustainability. Many smallholders on mixed crop-livestock farms use sustainable practices, but other smallholders practice a degrading, input-scarce agriculture. Some large farm operators use soil-conserving, minimum-tillage techniques while other large operators ignore soil-conserving techniques and practice an industrialized, high chemical input agriculture. The strength and pervasiveness of the link in the data between mixed crop-livestock farming and sustainable agricultural practices argues for agricultural policies that promote mixed crop-livestock livelihoods. Land 2016-02-06 5 1 Article 10.3390/land5010006 6 2073-445X 2016-02-06 doi: 10.3390/land5010006 Thomas Rudel Oh-Jung Kwon Birthe Paul Maryline Boval Idupulapati Rao Diana Burbano Megan McGroddy Amy Lerner Douglas White Mario Cuchillo Manuel Luna Michael Peters http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/1/5 The Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France is well known today for producing full-bodied red wines. Yet wine grapes are not native to France. Additionally, wine was not developed indigenously first. In the 7th century B.C. Etruscan merchants bringing wine landed on the shores of the Languedoc and established trade relationships with the native Gauls, later creating local viticulture, and laying the foundation for a strong cultural identity of French wine production and setting in motion a multi-billion dollar industry. This paper examines the first five centuries of wine consumption (from ~600 B.C. to ~100 B.C.), analyzing how preference of one type of luxury good over another created distinctive artifact patterns in the archaeological record. I create a simple agent-based model to examine how the trade of comestibles for wine led to a growing economy and a distinctive patterning of artifacts in the archaeological record of southern France. This model helps shed light on the processes that led to centuries of peaceable relationships with colonial merchants, and interacts with scholarly debate on why Etruscan amphorae are replaced by Greek amphorae so swiftly and completely. Land 2016-02-05 5 1 Article 10.3390/land5010005 5 2073-445X 2016-02-05 doi: 10.3390/land5010005 Stefani Crabtree http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/1/4 This paper reports on research to evaluate the potential of Original Texas Land Survey (OTLS) to generate information that can be used to quantitatively map historical vegetation cover and analyse pertinent aspects of vegetation ecology. Research was conducted in Brazos County in east-central Texas. OTLS data are easy to acquire and convert to geo-referenced autecological information. Reconstructing and mapping vegetation and land cover, conducting vegetation- and species-site analyses with to soil-ecological maps, reconstructing vegetation assemblages and forest structure can be easily accomplished. Due to the irregular surveying framework used by OTLS, mapping gradational grassland-savannah ecotone boundaries is impracticable. Land 2016-02-04 5 1 Article 10.3390/land5010004 4 2073-445X 2016-02-04 doi: 10.3390/land5010004 Indumathi Srinath Andrew Millington http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/1/3 This paper analyzes and quantifies the land use/land cover changes of the main forest and semi-natural landscape types in Sicily between 1955 and 2012. We analyzed seven representative forest and shrubland landscapes in Sicily. These study areas were chosen for their importance in the Sicilian forest panorama. We carried out a diachronic survey on historical and current aerial photos; all the aerial images used to survey the land use/land cover changes were digitalized and georeferenced in the UTM WGS84 system. In order to classify land use, the Regional Forest Inventory 2010 legend was adopted for the more recent images, and the CORINE Land Cover III level used for the older, lower resolution images. This study quantifies forest landscape dynamics; our results show for almost all study areas an increase of forest cover and expansion, whereas a regressive dynamic is found in rural areas due to intensive agricultural and pasturage uses. Understanding the dynamics of forest landscapes could enhance the role of forestry policy as a tool for landscape management and regional planning. Land 2016-01-26 5 1 Article 10.3390/land5010003 3 2073-445X 2016-01-26 doi: 10.3390/land5010003 Donato La Mela Veca Sebastiano Cullotta Sebastiano Sferlazza Federico Maetzke http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/1/2 n/a Land 2016-01-23 5 1 Editorial 10.3390/land5010002 2 2073-445X 2016-01-23 doi: 10.3390/land5010002 Land Editorial Office http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/5/1/1 This paper develops a method to explore how alternative scenarios of the expansion of maize production for biogas generation affect biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES). Our approach consists of four steps: (i) defining scenario targets and implementation of assumptions; (ii) simulating crop distributions across the landscape; (iii) assessing the ES impacts; and (iv) quantifying the impacts for a comparative trade-off analysis. The case study is the region of Hannover, Germany. One scenario assumes an increase of maize production in a little regulated governance system; two others reflect an increase of biogas production with either strict or flexible environmental regulation. We consider biodiversity and three ES: biogas generation, food production and the visual landscape. Our results show that the expansion of maize production results in predominantly negative impacts for other ES. However, positive effects can also be identified, i.e., when the introduction of maize leads to higher local crop diversity and, thus, a more attractive visual landscape. The scenario of little regulation portrays more negative impacts than the other scenarios. Targeted spatial planning, implementation and appropriate governance for steering maize production into less sensitive areas is crucial for minimizing trade-offs and exploiting synergies between bioenergy and other ES. Land 2016-01-22 5 1 Article 10.3390/land5010001 1 2073-445X 2016-01-22 doi: 10.3390/land5010001 Christian Albert Johannes Hermes Felix Neuendorf Christina von Haaren Michael Rode http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1213 In 1986, the Government of Vietnam implemented free market reforms known as Doi Moi (renovation) that provided private ownership of farms and companies, and encouraged deregulation and foreign investment. Since then, the economy of Vietnam has achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction and housing, and exports and foreign investments, each of which have resulted in momentous landscape transformations. One of the most evident changes is urbanization and an accompanying loss of agricultural lands and open spaces. These rapid changes pose enormous challenges for local populations as well as planning authorities. Accurate and timely data on changes in built-up urban environments are essential for supporting sound urban development. In this study, we applied the Support Vector Machine classification (SVM) to multi-temporal stacks of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images from 1993 to 2010 to quantify changes in built-up areas. The SVM classification algorithm produced a highly accurate map of land cover change with an overall accuracy of 95%. The study showed that most urban expansion occurred in the periods 2001–2006 and 2006–2010. The analysis was strengthened by the incorporation of population and other socio-economic data. This study provides state authorities a means to examine correlations between urban growth, spatial expansion, and other socio-economic factors in order to not only assess patterns of urban growth but also become aware of potential environmental, social, and economic problems. Land 2015-12-17 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041213 1213 1231 2073-445X 2015-12-17 doi: 10.3390/land4041213 Duong Nong Jefferson Fox Tomoaki Miura Sumeet Saksena http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1200 Initiatives to manage landscapes for both biodiversity protection and sustainable development commonly employ participatory methods to exploit the knowledge of citizens. We review five examples of citizen groups engaging with landscape scale conservation initiatives to contribute their knowledge, collect data for monitoring programs, study systems to detect patterns, and test hypotheses on aspects of landscape dynamics. Three are from landscape interventions that deliberately target biodiversity conservation and aim to have sustainable development as a collateral outcome. The other two are driven primarily by concerns for agricultural sustainability with biodiversity conservation as a collateral outcome. All five include programs in which, management agencies support data collection by citizen groups to monitor landscape changes. Situations where citizen groups self-organise to collect data and interpret data to aid in landscape scale decision making are less common and are restricted to landscapes where the inhabitants have a high level of scientific literacy. Given the complexity of landscape processes and the multiple decision makers who influence landscape outcomes we argue that citizen science broadly defined should be an essential element of landscape scale initiatives. Conservation managers should create space for citizen engagement in science and should empower citizen groups to experiment, learn, and adapt their decision-making to improve landscape scale outcomes. Land 2015-12-09 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041200 1200 1212 2073-445X 2015-12-09 doi: 10.3390/land4041200 Jeffrey Sayer Chris Margules Iris Bohnet Agni Boedhihartono Ray Pierce Allan Dale Kate Andrews http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1182 Wind-power development in the U.S. occurs primarily on private land, producing royalties for landowners through private contracts with wind-farm operators. Texas, the U.S. leader in wind-power production with well-documented support for wind power, has virtually all of its ~12 GW of wind capacity sited on private lands. Determining the spatial distribution of royalty payments from wind energy is a crucial first step to understanding how renewable power may alter land-based livelihoods of some landowners, and, as a result, possibly encourage land-use changes. We located ~1700 wind turbines (~2.7 GW) on 241 landholdings in Nolan and Taylor counties, Texas, a major wind-development region. We estimated total royalties to be ~$11.5 million per year, with mean annual royalty received per landowner per year of $47,879 but with significant differences among quintiles and between two sub-regions. Unequal distribution of royalties results from land-tenure patterns established before wind-power development because of a "property advantage," defined as the pre-existing land-tenure patterns that benefit the fraction of rural landowners who receive wind turbines. A "royalty paradox" describes the observation that royalties flow to a small fraction of landowners even though support for wind power exceeds 70 percent. Land 2015-12-02 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041182 1182 1199 2073-445X 2015-12-02 doi: 10.3390/land4041182 Christian Brannstrom Mary Tilton Andrew Klein Wendy Jepson http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1155 Madagascar is renowned for the loss of the forested habitat of lemurs and other species endemic to the island. Less well known is that in the highlands, a region often described as an environmental "basket-case" of fire-degraded, eroded grasslands, woody cover has been increasing for decades. Using information derived from publically available high- and medium-resolution satellites, this study characterizes tree cover dynamics in the highlands of Madagascar over the past two decades. Our results reveal heterogeneous patterns of increased tree cover on smallholder farms and village lands, spurred by a mix of endogenous and exogenous forces. The new trees play important roles in rural livelihoods, providing renewable supplies of firewood, charcoal, timber and other products and services, as well as defensible claims to land tenure in the context of a decline in the use of hillside commons for grazing. This study documents this nascent forest transition through Land Change Science techniques, and provides a prologue to political ecological analysis by setting these changes in their social and environmental context and interrogating the costs and benefits of the shift in rural livelihood strategies. Land 2015-11-25 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041155 1155 1181 2073-445X 2015-11-25 doi: 10.3390/land4041155 William McConnell Andrés Viña Christian Kull Clayton Batko http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1138 The Californian Floristic Province, ranging from Northern California, USA, to the northwestern portion of the state of Baja California, Mexico, is a region of great biological richness that has a high risk of loss of species due to the effect of human activities. The main stressor that threatens its biodiversity is the change in land use and vegetation cover, which severely impacts the environmental and socio-economic systems' functioning, affecting the provision of environmental services including the maintenance of biodiversity. The Tijuana River Watershed (TRW) is located within this floristic province. It has experienced rapid population growth during the last 50 years, demanding development of infrastructure in areas where native vegetation existed. As a binational watershed, it is an ideal area to study the processes involved in fragmentation and connectivity of natural environments, since both countries, while sharing the same environment, contrast greatly in their economic and social systems, which impose different pressures to these shared natural resources. Our research addresses change in vegetation cover and land use in the TRW, analyzing the changes and differences between Mexico and the United States. This analysis will be a basis to propose future management strategies for the conservation of ecological processes and biodiversity, according to the policies and actions for land management and conservation in both countries. Land 2015-11-25 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041138 1138 1154 2073-445X 2015-11-25 doi: 10.3390/land4041138 Ricardo Eaton-Gonzalez Eric Mellink http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1110 We developed an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate farmers' decisions on crop type and fertilizer application in response to commodity and biofuel crop prices. Farm profit maximization constrained by farmers' profit expectations for land committed to biofuel crop production was used as the decision rule. Empirical parameters characterizing farmers' profit expectations were derived from an agricultural landowners and operators survey and integrated in the ABM. The integration of crop production cost models and the survey information in the ABM is critical to producing simulations that can provide realistic insights into agricultural land use planning and policy making. Model simulations were run with historical market prices and alternative market scenarios for corn price, soybean to corn price ratio, switchgrass price, and switchgrass to corn stover ratio. The results of the comparison between simulated cropland percentage and crop rotations with satellite-based land cover data suggest that farmers may be underestimating the effects that continuous corn production has on yields. The simulation results for alternative market scenarios based on a survey of agricultural land owners and operators in the Clear Creek Watershed in eastern Iowa show that farmers see cellulosic biofuel feedstock production in the form of perennial grasses or corn stover as a more risky enterprise than their current crop production systems, likely because of market and production risks and lock in effects. As a result farmers do not follow a simple farm-profit maximization rule. Land 2015-11-24 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041110 1110 1137 2073-445X 2015-11-24 doi: 10.3390/land4041110 Deng Ding David Bennett Silvia Secchi http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1090 The aim of this paper is to explore patterns of wastewater infrastructures (sewers vs. septic tanks) in urbanizing watersheds across a coastal metropolitan region. This research combines an urban-rural gradient with spatial metrics at the patch and watershed scale (proportion of parcels on a treatment system, septic density, lot size and percent imperviousness) to analyze wastewater patterns in the Puget Sound, WA, USA. Results show that most urban residential parcels are hooked up to a sewer, although there remain urban residences on a septic tank with small lots. I find a complex arrangement of wastewater treatment in suburban watersheds representing a patchwork of parcels on sewers and septic tanks. Sewers dominate in total numbers, while the density of septic tanks is highest in this portion of the urban gradient. Lot size decreases from rural to urban; however, it varies depending on the type of wastewater treatment system. In urban watersheds, lots on septic tanks are significantly smaller than lots in suburban and rural watersheds and of a similar size compared to lots on sewers. I also find a significant difference in the amount of impervious surfaces in watersheds dominated by sewers vs. septic tanks. In the urban portion of the gradient, the amount of paved surfaces in parcels with septic tanks is also similar in level as parcels with sewers. I discuss how these patterns emerge from the interplay of biophysical, socio-economic and technological factors and how different regulatory regimes for septic tanks and sewers may further induce these patterns. Land 2015-11-23 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041090 1090 1109 2073-445X 2015-11-23 doi: 10.3390/land4041090 Daniele Spirandelli http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1060 This paper seeks to understand the drivers and pathways of local livelihood change and the prospects for transformation towards a more sustainable future. Data are used from several studies, and a participatory social learning process, which formed part of a larger project in two sites in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Secondary information from a wealth of related work is used to place our results within the historic context and more general trends in the country. Findings indicate that livelihoods in the rural Eastern Cape are on new trajectories. Agricultural production has declined markedly, at a time when the need for diversification of livelihoods and food security seems to be at a premium. This decline is driven by a suite of drivers that interact with, and are influenced by, other changes and stresses affecting local livelihoods. We distil out the factors, ranging from historical processes to national policies and local dynamics, that hamper peoples' motivation and ability to respond to locally identified vulnerabilities and, which, when taken together, could drive households into a trap. We end by considering the transformations required to help local people evade traps and progress towards a more promising future in a context of increasing uncertainty. Land 2015-11-19 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041060 1060 1089 2073-445X 2015-11-19 doi: 10.3390/land4041060 Sheona Shackleton Marty Luckert http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1030 Land uses are changing rapidly in Vietnam's upland northern borderlands. Regional development platforms such as the Greater Mekong Subregion, state-propelled market integration and reforestation programs, and lowland entrepreneurs and migrants are all impacting this frontier landscape. Drawing on a mixed methods approach using remote sensing data from 2000 to 2009 and ethnographic fieldwork, we examine how land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) has occurred across three borderland provinces—Lai Châu, Lào Cai and Hà Giang—with high proportions of ethnic minority semi-subsistence farmers. After a broad examination of regional land-use changes, we select three case studies to further analyze the underlying relationships between specific LULCC and local livelihood diversification strategies. These include specific patterns of urban growth due to a range of political decisions in Lai Châu and Lào Cai Provinces; reforestation due to non-timber forest (NTFP) product cultivation in the west of Lào Cai Province; and a stable landscape that restricts government attempts at refashioning upland livelihoods in the east of Hà Giang. Our findings point to the difficulties of completing LULCC maps for this highly heterogeneous region and the complexity of LULCC and livelihood interactions and relationships examined on the ground. Land 2015-11-18 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041030 1030 1059 2073-445X 2015-11-18 doi: 10.3390/land4041030 Sarah Turner Thi-Thanh-Hiên Pham http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1003 Illegal occupation of argan forest parcels by local households is a new phenomenon in South West Morocco. This is primarily due to the weakening of traditional common control systems and to the boom of the argan oil price. The scope of this work is to develop a decision support system based on dynamic spatial modelling, allowing to anticipate the land tenure dynamics and their impact on forest stand degradation under different policy scenarios. The model simulates the change of land possession by locals and the forest stand degradation levels. The methodological approach combines a Markov chain analysis (MCA) with stakeholders' preferences for land tenure. First, parcels' transition probabilities are computed using the MCA. Second, the acquiring suitability map is derived from multi-criteria evaluation procedure (AHP) using biophysical and socio-economic data. Finally, uncertainty is introduced in the simulation based on probabilistic analysis for supporting socio-economic diversity and non-mechanistic human behavior. The modelling approach was successfully used to compare three scenarios: business as usual (continuation of illegal acquiring), total disengagement of the population and private/public partnership with incentives for restoring argan parcel. The model yields geographic information about (i) the magnitude of the on-going process; (ii) the potential occurrence of land use conflicts induced by new policies; and (iii) the location of land conservation or degradation hot-spots. The outcomes of the "business as usual" and of the "total disengagement" models were similar over a 30-year simulation period: in both cases, the proportion of "highly degraded" parcels was doubled and the number of "quite degraded" parcels was increased by 50%. On the other hand, should the private/public partnership effectively work, about 40% of the parcels could be restored to a sustainable level. Land 2015-11-11 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4041003 1003 1029 2073-445X 2015-11-11 doi: 10.3390/land4041003 Farid Wahidi Julien Radoux Quentin Ponette Pierre Defourny http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/979 In spite of a growing interest in organic agriculture; there has been relatively little research on why farmers might choose to adopt organic methods, particularly in the developing world. To address this shortcoming, we developed an exploratory agent-based model depicting Philippine smallholder farmer decisions to implement organic techniques in rice paddy systems. Our modeling exercise was novel in its combination of three characteristics: first, agent rules were based on focus group data collected in the system of study. Second, a social network structure was built into the model. Third, we utilized variance-based sensitivity analysis to quantify model outcome variability, identify influential drivers, and suggest ways in which further modeling efforts could be focused and simplified. The model results indicated an upper limit on the number of farmers adopting organic methods. The speed of information spread through the social network; crop yields; and the size of a farmer's plot were highly influential in determining agents' adoption rates. The results of this stylized model indicate that rates of organic farming adoption are highly sensitive to the yield drop after switchover to organic techniques, and to the speed of information spread through existing social networks. Further research and model development should focus on these system characteristics. Land 2015-10-22 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4040979 979 1002 2073-445X 2015-10-22 doi: 10.3390/land4040979 Laura Olabisi Ryan Wang Arika Ligmann-Zielinska http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/957 Pokhara is one of the most naturally beautiful cities in the world with a unique geological setting. This important tourist city is under intense pressure from rapid urbanization and population growth. Multiple hazards and risks are rapidly increasing in Pokhara due to unsustainable land use practices, particularly the increase in built-up areas. This study examines the relationship among urbanization, land use/land cover dynamics and multiple hazard and risk analysis of the Pokhara valley from 1990 to 2013. We investigate some of the active hazards, such as floods, landslides, fire, sinkholes, land subsidence and earthquakes, and prepare an integrated multiple hazard risk map indicating the highly vulnerable zones. Land use and land cover maps from 1990 and 2013 from Landsat images (30 m resolution) have been prepared and analyzed for the spatial dynamics of urbanization and the transition of land use and land cover. In the 23-year period, the built-up area more than doubled from 24.03 km² to 54.20 km². Although the landscape in the urban, peri-urban and rural areas appears to be fragmented, different drivers play pivotal roles in landscape change in these areas. The results provide substantial information for establishing innovative action plans for disaster risk management in the valley. Recommendations are made for the most suitable places for future urban expansion in the valley. This study is important for raising awareness among policy makers and other public officials to include multiple hazard risk mitigation in land use policies and plans. Establishing connections between urban expansions, escalating population growth and multiple hazards and risk assessment will also improve in modelling the latent impact of future catastrophes and emergency preparedness. Land 2015-10-13 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4040957 957 978 2073-445X 2015-10-13 doi: 10.3390/land4040957 Bhagawat Rimal Himlal Baral Nigel Stork Kiran Paudyal Sushila Rijal http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/938 The use of ecosystem services (ES) in agricultural management is expanding; however, its integration in decision making processes is still challenging. This project was formulated to examine the ES approach and its usefulness with regard to management dilemmas. The Shikma region, north of the Negev Desert, was chosen as a case study. The management issue identified was the effect of various alternatives (minimum-tillage, no-tillage, straw-mulch and stubble-grazing) on the supply of ES. The expert-based ES assessments' findings reveal that no-tillage has the potential to increase many agroecosystem services and be more profitable for the farmer and the public. However, trade-offs between different ES and among stakeholder groups make it difficult to reach an unequivocal conclusion. As we have found, the process of the study is as important as the results. Throughout the project, an effort was made to engage stakeholders and policy-makers and to define decision-making processes. The study suggests that the ES approach can be useful in expanding the scope of agricultural management beyond provisioning services and create collaborations among farmers, communities, national institutions and environmental organizations to advance conservation agriculture. The study provides guidelines for conducting a productive ES assessment process that will lead to enhanced awareness and implementation. Land 2015-10-02 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4040938 938 956 2073-445X 2015-10-02 doi: 10.3390/land4040938 Hila Sagie Uri Ramon http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/914 While geographers and economists regularly work together on the development of land-use and land-cover change models, research on how differences in their modelling approaches affects the results is rare. Answering calls for more coordination between the two disciplines in order to build models that better represent the real world, we (two economists and a geographer) developed an economically grounded, spatially explicit, agent-based model to explore the effects of environmental policy on rural land use in New Zealand. This inter-disciplinary collaboration raised a number of differences in modelling approach. One key difference, and the focus of this paper, is the way in which processes that shape the behaviour of agents are integrated within the model. Using the model and a nationally representative survey, we compare the land-use effects of two disciplinary-aligned approaches to setting a farmer agent's likelihood of land-use conversion. While we anticipated that the approaches would significantly affect model outcomes, at a catchment scale they produced similar trends and results. However, further analysis at a sub-catchment scale suggests the approach to setting the likelihood of land-use conversion does matter. While the results outlined here will not fully resolve the disciplinary differences, they do outline the need to account for heterogeneity in the predicted agent behaviours for both disciplines. Land 2015-09-25 4 4 Article 10.3390/land4040914 914 937 2073-445X 2015-09-25 doi: 10.3390/land4040914 Fraser Morgan Philip Brown Adam Daigneault http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/888 In the past few years, there has been a growing amount of research on economic quantifications and valuations of ecosystem services (ES) in agricultural systems. However, little attention has been given to cultural ESs (CES) in general and their link to the landscape in particular. This paper tries to tackle this gap with a case study on the Ifugao Rice Terraces of the Philippines. The study aims to understand the interrelations between the different CESs and their relationships with the landscape. Besides contributing to knowledge about the degradation of the rice terraces, this study was conducted in order to discuss at a theoretical level how CESs and their relationship with the landscape must be addressed in ES management and policy decisions. The methodological approach includes a combination of semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and a perception survey (n = 66). The results reveal that CESs, apart from being interrelated, are also responsible for and affected by the degradation of the rice terraces, which is why they are important factors to consider in ecosystem conservation. This paper finally provides policy recommendations for the empirical case and demonstrates the importance of connecting CES analysis with landscape studies looking at agricultural systems. Land 2015-09-23 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030888 888 913 2073-445X 2015-09-23 doi: 10.3390/land4030888 Bianca Tilliger Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos Jesus Bustamante Josef Settele http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/869 Lost in the debates about the appropriate scale of production to promote agricultural growth in Africa is the rapid expansion of medium-scale farmers. Using Zambia as a case study, this article explores the causes and consequences of this middle-tier transformation on the future of small-scale agriculture. Combining political economic analysis with household survey data, this article examines the relationships between the growth in medium-scale farmers and changing conditions of land access, inequality, and alienation for small-scale farmers. Growth of medium-scale farmers is associated with high land inequality and rapid land alienation in high potential agricultural areas. This growth is shown to be partially driven by wage earner investment in land acquisition and is leading to substantial under-utilization of agricultural land. These processes are both limiting agricultural growth potential and foreclosing future options for an inclusive agricultural development strategy. Land 2015-09-18 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030869 869 887 2073-445X 2015-09-18 doi: 10.3390/land4030869 Nicholas Sitko Jordan Chamberlin http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/842 Synergies among land institutions and institutional changes impact on land markets and in guaranteeing agro-based employment, capital injection, local economic development and infrastructural improvement. Increasingly, these institutions have come under pressure and there are concerns about their functional capacities and implications on land markets. This paper discusses institutional synergies and its impacts on customary land markets under large-scale land acquisitions for agro-investments in Ghana. From the study, it was identified that the government of Ghana has maintained a non-interfering stance in customary land markets so as to protect the sanctity and independence of customary land institutions. Also, land transactions were found characterised by lack of transparency, information sharing, participation and accountability. For an efficient and effective management of LSLAs in Ghana, there is the need for a functioning institutional collaboration and one-stop-shop approach to streamline the apparent complex processes of acquiring agricultural land. The roles of customary custodians such as chiefs and Tendaamba should be critically reviewed and re-aligned according to local customs to make the institutions more accountable, consultative and transparent, while curtailing their enormous powers in land administration. Land 2015-09-17 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030842 842 868 2073-445X 2015-09-17 doi: 10.3390/land4030842 Elias Kuusaana Nicolas Gerber http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/807 Rural livelihoods and the land systems on which they depend are increasingly influenced by distant markets through economic globalization. Place-based analyses of land and livelihood system sustainability must then consider both proximate and distant influences on local decision-making. Thus, advancing land change theory in the context of economic globalization calls for a systematic understanding of the general processes as well as local contingencies shaping local responses to global signals. Synthesis of insights from place-based case studies is a path forward for developing such systematic knowledge. This paper introduces a generalized agent-based modeling framework for model-based synthesis to investigate the relative importance of structural versus agent-level factors in driving land-use and livelihood responses to changing global market signals. Six case-study sites that differed in environmental conditions, market access and influence, and livelihood settings were analyzed. Stronger market signals generally led to intensification and/or expansion of agriculture or increased non-farm labor, while changes in agents' risk attitudes prompted heterogeneous local responses to global market signals. These results demonstrate model-based synthesis as a promising approach to overcome many of the challenges of current synthesis methods in land change science and identify generalized as well as locally contingent responses to global market signals. Land 2015-09-16 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030807 807 841 2073-445X 2015-09-16 doi: 10.3390/land4030807 Nicholas Magliocca http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/778 Despite scientific progress in operationalizing sustainable development (SD), it is still hampered by methodological challenges at the regional level. We developed a framework to analyse stakeholder based, SD targets for future land use, which are characterized by different impact levels and spatial references. The framework allows for the analysis of land use demands in the context of SD. We identified societal use targets in north-eastern Germany, particularly for the area type's lowland fens and irrigation fields, represented through strategy documents. We used frame analysis to aggregate and condense the targets into land use claims. Results present a framework for the ex-ante Sustainability Impact Assessment of land use changes at the regional level and the determination and regionalization of the future societal demand for land use functions. For future land use at the regional level, manifold land use claims exist, but on smaller scales, area-specific targets are less apparent. Six key main-use claims and 44 side-use claims were identified at the regional level and for area types. Possible trade-offs among land use claims for land use functions can be identified at each governance level. Implications of the methodological approach are discussed according to moving development targets and SD as multi-sector and multi-level governance issues. Land 2015-09-14 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030778 778 806 2073-445X 2015-09-14 doi: 10.3390/land4030778 Till Hermanns Katharina Helming Katharina Schmidt Hannes König Heiko Faust http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/754 How globalization impacts native land cover has become an important issue in studies addressing environmental change, which draw explicit attention to processes of cause and effect operating over significant distances. The literature shows that globalization constitutes an important underlying driver of both deforestation and forest transition via demographic and economic phenomena such as migration and remittance flows. Yet, little is known about how global forces mold the spatial structure of agro-commodity production and how this impacts the balance of forces affecting land change at the meso-scale, within the boundaries of the nation-state. The research presented here fills this gap by examining production networks for Mexico, a large OECD country with complex land change dynamics that has recently experienced a dramatic opening to the world economy. Specifically, we consider how maize and beef commodity chains evolved over the past few decades into a highly interdependent maize-cattle complex, and suggest linkages to patterns of land change at the national scale. Using land cover maps for 1993, 2002, and 2012, at the national scale, governmental statistics and datasets, interviews with key informants, and field observations the article provides an analysis of the impact of neoliberal reforms on the changing geography of beef and maize production, and argues that this process underlies the evolution of Mexico's land change regime, both before and after the NAFTA reforms. As such, the article presents an account, and a case for further research on the topic of how teleconnections are constituted by spatially-extensive food production networks. Land 2015-08-21 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030754 754 777 2073-445X 2015-08-21 doi: 10.3390/land4030754 Yankuic Galvan-Miyoshi Robert Walker Barney Warf http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/737 Eutrophication caused by agriculture is an increasing ecological threat to the Baltic Sea. Modern, resource-efficient farming systems based on integrated plant and animal production, effective nutrient recycling and low external inputs can enhance multiple agro-ecosystem services, resulting in reduced pollution. Practical examples of such farming systems are not widespread. Therefore, the Baltic Ecological Recycling Agriculture and Society (BERAS) Implementation project aimed to foster this systemic shift. In this paper, agronomic strategies are described to improve nitrogen (N) efficiency for the conversion to ecological recycling agriculture (ERA). First, N farm gate balances of 22 farms in conversion are presented. They showed a large variation from −9 to 90 kg∙N∙ha−1∙a−1. Then, the use of guidelines and advisory tools to improve the nitrogen efficiency is described. The legume estimation trainer and nitrogen budget calculator help assess and optimize the nitrogen supply from legumes under farming conditions. The application of the crop rotation planning tool "ROTOR" guides advisors and farmers to identify agronomically and environmentally sound rotations. The tools can help overcome key agronomic constraints by implementing ERA. The necessity of accompanying measures from policy and the need to change food consumption patterns are discussed. Land 2015-08-20 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030737 737 753 2073-445X 2015-08-20 doi: 10.3390/land4030737 Karin Stein-Bachinger Moritz Reckling Johann Bachinger Johannes Hufnagel Wijnand Koker Artur Granstedt http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/711 Rainfall intensity is predicted to increase under a changing climate, leading to increased risks of hillslope erosion, downstream sedimentation and flooding. For many catchments used for grazing and agricultural land uses, it will become increasingly important to maintain ecohydrological functioning despite climatic extremes. One means to achieve this is through strategic reforestation using locally endemic species, in spatial configurations that effectively intercept, retain or and redistribute overland flows. This paper adopts a modelling approach for investigating the potential of one such design termed "integrated vegetation bands" (IVB), to increase the retention of runoff across steep hillslopes, particularly in the sub-tropics where rainstorms are becoming increasingly intense. A spatially distributed simulation model (MIKE-SHE) was applied to a steep, grazed catchment (Maronghi Creek catchment, Southeast Queensland, Australia) to compare stormwater runoff characteristics between: (1) the existing pasture land cover; and (2) a series of hypothetical IVB added across this pasture land. The IVB were approximately 20 m wide, and configured at 5% gradient towards ridgelines. Results for estimates of overland flow depth and infiltration (spatial), and accumulative water balance (temporal), confirm that the area of hillslope retaining > 10 mm/day more runoff increased by 22% under IVB compared to the pasture land use. Excluding the IVB themselves, the area of hillslope where runoff retention increased was 11%. During the most intense rainfall, IVB held up to 25% greater water depth and had 10% greater infiltration at the hillslope scale. At the sub-catchment scale, discharge decreased by 7% and infiltration increased by 23%. The findings for sub-tropical landscapes presented here are consistent with studies conducted in temperate regions. Based on the results of this preliminary modelling work, the IVB concept has been established as a paired-catchment field trial in a high rainfall catchment in Southeast Queensland, Australia. Land 2015-08-20 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030711 711 736 2073-445X 2015-08-20 doi: 10.3390/land4030711 Justin Ryan Clive McAlpine John Ludwig John Callow http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/688 The identification of an appropriate justification for Agri-Environment-Climate (AEC) payments is a crucial issue in the new Rural Development Programme (RDP). Given the environmental importance of grasslands in Trentino (Italy), the Management Authority in charge of the RDP decided to integrate an approach based on Ecosystem Services (ES) into the calculation of AEC payments. The paper presents the methodology used for this approach as well as the preliminary results. The first step entails building a probabilistic model for the ES, named Sustainable Fodder Production. Model outputs are then integrated with the accounting results based on the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) database (2009–2012) with the aim of calculating the additional costs and income waived due to the environmental commitments deriving from the sustainable management of permanent grassland in livestock farming. Sustainability measures imply more extensive management practices that maintain meadows in a healthy state. Land 2015-08-13 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030688 688 710 2073-445X 2015-08-13 doi: 10.3390/land4030688 Alessandra Notte Sonia Marongiu Mauro Masiero Pietro Molfetta Riccardo Molignoni Luca Cesaro http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/670 In Southeast Asia land use change associated with forest loss and degradation is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is of particular concern where deforestation occurs on peat soils. A business-as-usual (BAU) land change model was developed using Dinamica EGO© for a REDD+ Demonstration Activity area in south-east Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia containing Berbak National Park (NP). The model output will be used as baseline land change predictions for comparison with alternative land cover management scenarios as part of a REDD+ feasibility study. The study area is approximately 376,000 ha with approximately 50% on peat soils. The model uses published 2000 and 2010 land cover maps as input and projects land cover change for thirty years until 2040. The model predicted that under a BAU scenario the forest area, 185,000 ha in 2010, will decline by 37% by 2040. In protected forest areas, approximately 50% of the study area, forest cover will reduce by 25%. Peat swamp forest will reduce by almost 37%. The greatest land cover category increases are plantation/regrowth areas (which includes oil palm) and open areas which each increase by 30,000 ha. These results indicate that the site has great potential as an Indonesian REDD+ Demonstration Activity. Land 2015-08-10 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030670 670 687 2073-445X 2015-08-10 doi: 10.3390/land4030670 Ian Elz Kevin Tansey Susan Page Mandar Trivedi http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/656 This study investigates how two existing pan-tropical above-ground biomass (AGB) maps (Saatchi 2011, Baccini 2012) can be combined to derive forest ecosystem specific carbon estimates. Several data-fusion models which combine these AGB maps according to their local correlations with independent datasets such as the spectral bands of SPOT VEGETATION imagery are analyzed. Indeed these spectral bands convey information about vegetation type and structure which can be related to biomass values. Our study area is the island of Borneo. The data-fusion models are evaluated against a reference AGB map available for two forest concessions in Sabah. The highest accuracy was achieved by a model which combines the AGB maps according to the mean of the local correlation coefficients calculated over different kernel sizes. Combining the resulting AGB map with a new Borneo land cover map (whose overall accuracy has been estimated at 86.5%) leads to average AGB estimates of 279.8 t/ha and 233.1 t/ha for forests and degraded forests respectively. Lowland dipterocarp and mangrove forests have the highest and lowest AGB values (305.8 t/ha and 136.5 t/ha respectively). The AGB of all natural forests amounts to 10.8 Gt mainly stemming from lowland dipterocarp (66.4%), upper dipterocarp (10.9%) and peat swamp forests (10.2%). Degraded forests account for another 2.1 Gt of AGB. One main advantage of our approach is that, once the best fitting data-fusion model is selected, no further AGB reference dataset is required for implementing the data-fusion process. Furthermore, the local harmonization of AGB datasets leads to more spatially precise maps. This approach can easily be extended to other areas in Southeast Asia which are dominated by lowland dipterocarp forest, and can be repeated when newer or more accurate AGB maps become available. Land 2015-08-04 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030656 656 669 2073-445X 2015-08-04 doi: 10.3390/land4030656 Andreas Langner Frédéric Achard Christelle Vancutsem Jean-Francois Pekel Dario Simonetti Giacomo Grassi Kanehiro Kitayama Mikiyasu Nakayama http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/627 Increasing temperatures and wildfire incidence and decreasing precipitation and river runoff in southern Africa are predicted to have a variety of impacts on the ecology, structure, and function of semi-arid savannas, which provide innumerable livelihood resources for millions of people. This paper builds on previous research that documents change in inundation and fire regimes in the Chobe River Basin (CRB) in Namibia and Botswana and proposes to demonstrate a methodology that can be applied to disentangle the effect of environmental variability from land management decisions on changing and ecologically sensitive savanna ecosystems in transboundary contexts. We characterized the temporal dynamics (1985–2010) of vegetation productivity for the CRB using proxies of vegetation productivity and examine the relative importance of shifts in flooding and fire patterns to vegetation dynamics and effects of the association of phases of the El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on vegetation greenness. Our results indicate that vegetation in these semi-arid environments is highly responsive to climatic fluctuations and the long-term trend is one of increased but heterogeneous vegetation cover. The increased cover and heterogeneity during the growing season is especially noted in communally-managed areas of Botswana where long-term fire suppression has been instituted, in contrast to communal areas in Namibia where heterogeneity in vegetation cover is mostly increasing primarily outside of the growing season and may correspond to mosaic early dry season burns. Observed patterns of increased vegetation productivity and heterogeneity may relate to more frequent and intense burning and higher spatial variability in surface water availability from both precipitation and regional inundation patterns, with implications for global environmental change and adaptation in subsistence-based communities. Land 2015-07-27 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030627 627 655 2073-445X 2015-07-27 doi: 10.3390/land4030627 Narcisa Pricope Andrea Gaughan John All Michael Binford Lucas Rutina http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/607 Soil loss is not limited to change from forest or woodland to other land uses/covers. It may occur when there is agricultural land-use/cover modification or conversion. Soil loss may influence loss of carbon from the soil, hence implication on greenhouse gas emission. Changing land use could be considered actually or potentially successful in adapting to climate change, or may be considered maladaptation if it creates environmental degradation. In semi-arid northern Ghana, changing agricultural practices have been identified amongst other climate variability and climate change adaptation measures. Similarly, some of the policies aimed at improving farm household resilience toward climate change impact might necessitate land use change. The heterogeneity of farm household (agents) cannot be ignored when addressing land use/cover change issues, especially when livelihood is dependent on land. This paper therefore presents an approach for simulating soil loss from an agro-ecosystem using multi-agent simulation (MAS). We adapted a universal soil loss equation as a soil loss sub-model in the Vea-LUDAS model (a MAS model). Furthermore, for a 20-year simulation period, we presented the impact of agricultural land-use adaptation strategy (maize cultivation credit i.e., maize credit scenario) on soil loss and compared it with the baseline scenario i.e., business-as-usual. Adoption of maize as influenced by maize cultivation credit significantly influenced agricultural land-use change in the study area. Although there was no significant difference in the soil loss under the tested scenarios, the incorporation of human decision-making in a temporal manner allowed us to view patterns that cannot be seen in single step modeling. The study shows that opening up cropland on soil with a high erosion risk has implications for soil loss. Hence, effective measures should be put in place to prevent the opening up of lands that have high erosion risk. Land 2015-07-24 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030607 607 626 2073-445X 2015-07-24 doi: 10.3390/land4030607 Biola Badmos Sampson Agodzo Grace Villamor Samuel Odai http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/578 We use the hybrid modeling laboratory of the Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics (MedLanD) Project to simulate barranco incision in eastern Spain under different scenarios of natural and human environmental change. We carry out a series of modeling experiments set in the Rio Penaguila valley of northern Alicante Province. The MedLanD Modeling Laboratory (MML) is able to realistically simulate gullying and incision in a multi-dimensional, spatially explicit virtual landscape. We first compare erosion modeled in wooded and denuded landscapes in the absence of human land-use. We then introduce simulated small-holder (e.g., prehistoric Neolithic) farmer/herders in six experiments, by varying community size (small, medium, large) and land management strategy (satisficing and maximizing). We compare the amount and location of erosion under natural and anthropogenic conditions. Natural (e.g., climatically induced) land-cover change produces a distinctly different signature of landscape evolution than does land-cover change produced by agropastoral land-use. Human land-use induces increased coupling between hillslopes and channels, resulting in increased downstream incision. Land 2015-07-14 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030578 578 606 2073-445X 2015-07-14 doi: 10.3390/land4030578 C. Barton Isaac Ullah Arjun Heimsath http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/560 The present study aimed to detect the main shifts in land-use architecture and assess the factors behind the changes in typical tropical semi-arid land in Burkina Faso. Three sets of time-series LANDSAT data over a 23-year period were used to detect land use changes and their underpinning drivers in multifunctional but vulnerable ecologies. Group discussions in selected villages were organized for mapping output interpretation and collection of essential drivers of change as perceived by local populations. Results revealed profound changes and transitions during the study period. During the last decade, shrub and wood savannahs exhibited high net changes (39% and −37% respectively) with a weak net positive change for cropland (only 2%,) while cropland and shrub savannah exhibited high swap (8% and 16%). This suggests that the area of cropland remained almost unchanged but was subject to relocation, wood savannah decreased drastically, and shrub savannah increased exponentially. Cropland exhibited a null net persistence while shrub and wood savannahs exhibited positive and negative net persistence (1.91 and −10.24), respectively, indicating that there is movement toward agricultural intensification and wood savannah tended to disappear to the benefit of shrub savannah. Local people are aware of the changes that have occurred and support the idea that illegal wood cutting and farming are inappropriate farming practices associated with immigration; absence of alternative cash generation sources, overgrazing and increasing demand for wood energy are driving the changes in their ecosystems. Policies that integrate restoration and conservation of natural ecosystems and promote sustainable agroforestry practices in the study zone are highly recommended. Land 2015-07-09 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030560 560 577 2073-445X 2015-07-09 doi: 10.3390/land4030560 Issa Ouedraogo Cheikh Mbow Michael Balinga Henry Neufeldt http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/3/541 The socio-ecological system dominated by pastureland in the Asteroussia Mountains (Crete, Greece) was analyzed over a long time interval (1945–2010) to identify the most relevant system's characteristics and changes. Vegetation cover and land-uses have been quantified by analyzing aerial photographs exploring the whole study period. Soil characteristics have been assessed by carrying out an extensive field survey for the last reference year (2010) and by estimating the average soil loss for the past period using the PESERA soil erosion model validated by field measurements. Based on environmental, social and economic attributes, three major periods characterizing the socio-ecological system of Asteroussia Mountains have been distinguished. During the first and second period, the land was satisfactorily managed with moderate–low soil erosion rates despite the adverse (prevailing) soil, topographic and climate conditions for vegetation growth. The third time interval featured a rapid growth in the livestock density causing increased soil erosion rates, loss in plant productivity, and a generalized over-exploitation of natural resources. As a consequence, the desertification process has significantly increased in the last period. The analysis of the long-term evolution of socio-ecological system provided evidence to understand the main drivers of land degradation and to recommend mitigation policies specifically addressing Mediterranean pastureland. Land 2015-07-03 4 3 Article 10.3390/land4030541 541 559 2073-445X 2015-07-03 doi: 10.3390/land4030541 Costas Kosmas Vassilis Detsis Mina Karamesouti Kate Kounalaki Penny Vassiliou Luca Salvati http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/513 Human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) quantifies alteration of the biosphere caused by land use change and biomass harvest. In global and regional scale assessments, the majority of HANPP is associated with agricultural biomass harvest. We adapted these methods to the watershed scale and calculated land cover change and HANPP in an agricultural watershed in 1968 and 2011. Between 1968 and 2011, forest cover remained near 50% of the watershed, but row crop decreased from 26% to 0.4%, pasture increased from 19% to 32%, and residential area increased from 2% to 10%. Total HANPP decreased from 35% of potential Net Primary Productivity (NPP) in 1968 to 28% in 2011. Aboveground HANPP remained constant at 42%. Land use change accounted for 86%–89% of HANPP. Aboveground HANPP did not change despite the major shift in agricultural land use from row crop and pasture. The HANPP and land use change in Doddies Creek watershed reflects changing land use patterns in the southeastern US, driven by a complex interaction of local to global scale processes including change in farm viability, industrialization of agriculture, and demographic shifts. In the future, urbanization and biofuel production are likely to become important drivers of HANPP in the region. At the watershed scale, HANPP can be useful for improving land use decisions and landscape management to decrease human impact on the ecosystem and ensure the flow of ecosystem services. Land 2015-06-18 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020513 513 540 2073-445X 2015-06-18 doi: 10.3390/land4020513 C. Andersen R. Donovan John Quinn http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/475 Land abandonment and the subsequent re-forestation are important drivers behind the loss of ecosystem services in mountain regions. Agent-based models can help to identify global change impacts on farmland abandonment and can test policy and management options to counteract this development. Realigning the representation of human decision making with time scales of ecological processes such as reforestation presents a major challenge in this context. Models either focus on the agent-specific behavior anchored in the current generation of farmers at the expense of representing longer scale environmental processes or they emphasize the simulation of long-term economic and forest developments where representation of human behavior is simplified in time and space. In this context, we compare the representation of individual and aggregated decision-making in the same model structure and by doing so address some implications of choosing short or long term time horizons in land-use modeling. Based on survey data, we integrate dynamic agents into a comparative static economic sector supply model in a Swiss mountain region. The results from an extensive sensitivity analysis show that this agent-based land-use change model can reproduce observed data correctly and that both model versions are sensitive to the same model parameters. In particular, in both models the specification of opportunity costs determines the extent of production activities and land-use changes by restricting the output space. Our results point out that the agent-based model can capture short and medium term developments in land abandonment better than the aggregated version without losing its sensitivity to important socio-economic drivers. For comparative static approaches, extensive sensitivity analysis with respect to opportunity costs, i.e., the measure of benefits forgone due to alternative uses of labor is essential for the assessment of the impact of climate change on land abandonment and re-forestation in mountain regions. Land 2015-06-08 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020475 475 512 2073-445X 2015-06-08 doi: 10.3390/land4020475 Julia Brändle Gaby Langendijk Simon Peter Sibyl Brunner Robert Huber http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/454 The north-eastern escarpment of Madagascar harbours the island's last remaining large-scale humid forest massifs surrounded by a small-scale agricultural mosaic. There is high deforestation, commonly thought to be caused by shifting cultivation practiced by local land users to produce upland rice. However, little is known about the dynamics between forest and shifting cultivation systems at a regional level. Our study presents a first attempt to quantify changes in the extent of forest and different agricultural land cover classes, and to identify the main dynamics of land cover change for two intervals, 1995–2005 and 2005–2011. Over the 16-year study period, the speed of forest loss increased, the total area of upland rice production remained almost stable, and the area of irrigated rice fields slightly increased. While our findings seem to confirm a general trend of land use intensification, deforestation through shifting cultivation is still on the rise. Deforestation mostly affects the small forest fragments interspersed in the agricultural mosaic and is slowly leading to a homogenization of the landscape. These findings have important implications for future interventions to slow forest loss in the region, as the processes of agricultural expansion through shifting cultivation versus intensified land use cannot per se be considered mutually exclusive. Land 2015-05-29 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020454 454 474 2073-445X 2015-05-29 doi: 10.3390/land4020454 Julie Zaehringer Sandra Eckert Peter Messerli http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/436 Over the last decade considerable research has been conducted on the development and the impacts of large-scale economic land concessions for plantations in Laos and Cambodia. These studies have variously illustrated that concessions frequently result in serious negative impacts on local people and the environment, often leading to dramatic transformations of landscapes and livelihoods. As important as this research has been, these studies have largely focused on the immediate impacts of the "enclosure" process associated with gaining access to land by investors. In this study we take a different approach, investigating the implications of large-scale land concessions in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia with regard to places outside of actual concession areas, both within the countries where the concessions are located and beyond. These links have been referred to as "teleconnections" or "telecoupling", and adopting a "telecoupling" approach allows us to focus on particular relations between land-use change in one location and land-use change elsewhere, either nearby or distant, as the result of large-scale plantation development, both during the early plantation development period, and later when plantations are productive. It also provides opportunities to engage with Land Change Science (LCS) through Political Ecology (PE). Land 2015-05-15 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020436 436 453 2073-445X 2015-05-15 doi: 10.3390/land4020436 Ian Baird Jefferson Fox http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/413 The importance of wood and wood byproducts as biomass feedstocks is of increasing interest as a source of ethanol and electricity. Second generation woody feedstock sources in Michigan, e.g., hybrid poplar and hybrid willow (Populus spp.), and native forests, particularly aspen and northern hardwoods, are a potential source of woody biomass for these uses. This study provides a geographic information system (GIS) framework for assessing the current spatial extent of aspen and northern hardwoods) and their proximity to roads. Additionally, the potential for expanding the area of these feedstock sources based on pre-European settlement vegetation cover is assessed. Utilizing GIS technology to compile, edit and analyze available geospatial data (e.g., present day and pre-European settlement land use/cover, soils, road infrastructure, and land ownership) for counties located in the eastern half of the Upper Peninsula and northern half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan provides a robust framework for various management scenarios to be evaluated in a cost effective manner and foster better decision making. Land 2015-05-14 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020413 413 435 2073-445X 2015-05-14 doi: 10.3390/land4020413 Sara Alian Ann Maclean http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/378 A landscape epidemiology modeling framework is presented which integrates the simulation outputs from an established spatial agent-based model (ABM) of malaria with a geographic information system (GIS). For a study area in Kenya, five landscape scenarios are constructed with varying coverage levels of two mosquito-control interventions. For each scenario, maps are presented to show the average distributions of three output indices obtained from the results of 750 simulation runs. Hot spot analysis is performed to detect statistically significant hot spots and cold spots. Additional spatial analysis is conducted using ordinary kriging with circular semivariograms for all scenarios. The integration of epidemiological simulation-based results with spatial analyses techniques within a single modeling framework can be a valuable tool for conducting a variety of disease control activities such as exploring new biological insights, monitoring epidemiological landscape changes, and guiding resource allocation for further investigation. Land 2015-05-13 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020378 378 412 2073-445X 2015-05-13 doi: 10.3390/land4020378 S. Arifin Rumana Arifin Dilkushi Pitts M. Rahman Sara Nowreen Gregory Madey Frank Collins http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/355 In this article, we argue that research on land reform in the nation of Zimbabwe has overlooked possibilities of integrating geospatial methods into analyses and, at the same time, geographers have not adequately developed techniques for this application. Scholars have generally been captured within the debate focused on the success or failure of the Zimbabwean land reform program, and have neglected to analyze what has occurred where during the process of "fast-track land reform". To date, no extensive national dataset of land ownership change, and the effect of this change on land use planning strategies, has been developed within the scientific community. As a result, most publications, even very detailed and thorough ones, have been based on regional case studies, broad estimates, or on outdated, cross-referenced statistics. To overcome the lack of spatio-temporal data, we propose an analytic framework to map Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform and its country-wide effects. It emphasizes the potential of geographic information systems and satellite remote sensing to provide an objective basis for future studies of the subject. Land 2015-04-30 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020355 355 377 2073-445X 2015-04-30 doi: 10.3390/land4020355 Konrad Hentze Gunter Menz http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/337 This study deals with the landscape evolution reflected in the changes of land cover in the suburban area of Marathon, Attica, Greece. The study was based on remote sensing images covering the time period between 1945 and 2007. Several other types of data were also used, such as a digital terrain model, historical orthophotos, vegetation maps, geological maps, cadastral maps and aerial photos. These types of data were used in order to create the spatial database for the classification/interpretation of land cover and to identify the land cover changes that occurred during the period in question. The results of this study showed significant land cover changes, especially for the land covered by forests and wetlands with a 47% and a 37% decrease, respectively. The spatial arrangement of the development of residential areas was partially predictable, while the occurrence of land cover changes due to retrogressive vegetation succession appeared rather idiosyncratically throughout the area initially covered by forest. Land 2015-04-23 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020337 337 354 2073-445X 2015-04-23 doi: 10.3390/land4020337 Apostolos Gaitanis Kleomenis Kalogeropoulos Vassilis Detsis Christos Chalkias http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/325 Interacting land use demands and competing interests originating from fields such as agriculture, housing, mobility and nature conservation call for integrated governance approaches that incorporate disciplinary perspectives and arbitrate between them. The German research program "Sustainable Land Management" targets this challenge and provides an umbrella for a number of regional projects involving transdisciplinary system-oriented approaches to sustainable land use, connecting researchers and practitioners. This research note gives an insight into the experiences presented at the program's fourth year status conference, held in October 2014 in Berlin. It focuses on cross-scalar and cross-sectoral approaches to governing urban-rural interdependencies of land use and scrutinizes debates on how to implement and disseminate project results. Land 2015-04-22 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020325 325 336 2073-445X 2015-04-22 doi: 10.3390/land4020325 Annegret Repp Thomas Weith http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/300 This study assessed the change in some environmental parameters in the Plateau region of North-Central Nigeria (Barakinladi, Jos, and Kafachan environs) using the nexus of landcover change, land surface temperature, surface albedo, and topography. The study employed both remote sensing and statistical techniques for the period between 1986 and 2014 to analyze the dynamics between and within these environmental variables. In Barakinladi, the built up landcover change is highest (increasing from 39.53% to 47.59% between 1986 and 2014); LST ranges from 19.09 °C to 38.59 °C in 1986 and from 22.68 °C and 41.68 °C in 2014; and the albedo ranges between 0.014 and 0.154 in 1986 and 0.017 and 0.248 in 2014. In Jos, the built-up landcover occupied 34.26% in 1986 and 36.67% in 2014; LST values range between 20.83 °C and 41.33 °C in 1986 and between 21.61 °C and 42.64 °C in 2014; and the albedo ranges between 0.003 and 0.211 in 1986 and 0.15 and 0.237 in 2014. In Kafachan area, the built up landcover occupied 32.95% in 1986 and 39.01% in 2014. Urbanization and agricultural activities, including animal grazing, were responsible for the gradual loss in vegetation and increasing average LST and albedo. The results also revealed that changing landcover and topography have a relationship with surface albedo and land surface temperature, thereby impacting significantly on ecosystem services delivered by the natural system. Land 2015-04-17 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020300 300 324 2073-445X 2015-04-17 doi: 10.3390/land4020300 Shakirudeen Odunuga Gbolahan Badru http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/281 This paper proposes the use of agent-based models (ABMs) as "interested amateurs" in policy making, and uses the example of the SWAP model of soil and water conservation adoption to demonstrate the potential of this approach. Daniel Dennett suggests experts often talk past or misunderstand each other, seek to avoid offending each other or appearing ill-informed and generally err on the side of under-explaining a topic. Dennett suggests that these issues can be overcome by including "interested amateurs" in discussions between experts. In the context of land use policy debates, and policy making more generally, this paper suggests that ABMs have particular characteristics that make them excellent potential "interested amateurs" in discussions between our experts: policy stakeholders. This is demonstrated using the SWAP (Soil and Water Conservation Adoption) model, which was used with policy stakeholders in Ethiopia. The model was successful in focussing discussion, inviting criticism, dealing with sensitive topics and drawing out understanding between stakeholders. However, policy stakeholders were still hesitant about using such a tool. This paper reflects on these findings and attempts to plot a way forward for the use of ABMs as "interested amateurs" and, in the process, make clear the differences in approach to other participatory modelling efforts. Land 2015-04-14 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020281 281 299 2073-445X 2015-04-14 doi: 10.3390/land4020281 Peter Johnson http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/2/255 Changes in the hydrology of sediments in tidal marshes or landfills may affect the uptake of metals in the vegetation. Leaf and stem samples of Salix cinerea (grey sallow) were collected during four consecutive growing seasons at six contaminated plots on a polluted dredged sediment landfill and one plot on an uncontaminated reference site. The first three contaminated plots were already emerged in the first half of the first growing season, while the other three were submerged in the first year, but became increasingly dry over the study period. Foliar and stem cutting concentrations for Cd, Zn and Mn increased on the latter three plots over the four years. Willow bark contained high concentrations of Cd, Zn and Mn. In two consecutive greenhouse experiments with willow cuttings from different origins (uncontaminated and contaminated sites) and grown under different soil conditions (uncontaminated and contaminated), we observed an important translocation of Mn from bark to shoots. In a third experiment with willow cuttings collected on soils with a range of heavy metal concentrations and, thus, with a broad range of Cd (4–67 mg/kg dry matter), Zn (247–660 mg/kg dry matter) and Mn (38–524 mg/kg dry matter) concentrations in the bark, high Mn concentrations in the bark were found to affect the budburst of willow cuttings, while no association of delayed budburst with Cd and Zn concentrations in the bark was found. We conclude that wood and, especially, bark are not a sink for metals in living willows. The high Mn concentrations in the bark directly or indirectly caused delayed or restricted budburst of the willow cuttings. Land 2015-04-13 4 2 Article 10.3390/land4020255 255 280 2073-445X 2015-04-13 doi: 10.3390/land4020255 Bart Vandecasteele Paul Quataert Frederic Piesschaert Suzanna Lettens Bruno De Vos Gijs Du Laing http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/231 High-precision land-cover-land-use GIS mapping was performed in four major townships in Maine's Aroostook River Valley, using on-screen digitization and direct interpretation of very high spatial resolution satellite multispectral imagery (15–60 cm) and high spatial resolution LiDAR data (2 m) and the field mapping method. The project not only provides the first-ever high-precision land-use maps for northern Maine, but it also yields accurate hectarage estimates of different land-use types, in particular grassland, defined as fallow land, pasture, and hay field. This enables analysis of potential land availability and suitability for grass biomass production and other sustainable land uses. The results show that the total area of fallow land in the four towns is 7594 hectares, which accounts for 25% of total open land, and that fallow plots equal to or over four hectares in size total 4870, or 16% of open land. Union overlay analysis, using the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) soil data, indicates that only a very small percentage of grassland (4.9%) is on "poorly-drained" or "very-poorly-drained" soils, and that most grassland (85%) falls into the "farmland of state importance" or "prime farmland" categories, as determined by NRCS. It is concluded that Maine's Aroostook River Valley has an ample base of suitable, underutilized land for producing grass biomass. Land 2015-03-20 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010231 231 254 2073-445X 2015-03-20 doi: 10.3390/land4010231 Chunzeng Wang Jason Johnston David Vail Jared Dickinson David Putnam http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/216 Rosetta Promontory, Egypt has been suffering from a continuous erosion problem. The dramatic retreatment was observed during the last century. It is basically due to the construction of Aswan High Dam in 1964, which reduced the flow and sediment discharges. In this paper, four Landsat images (two Thematic Mapper and two Enhanced Thematic Mapper) covering the period from 1984 to 2014 were used. These Landsat images were radio-metrically and geometrically corrected, and then, multi-temporal post-classification analysis was performed to detect land cover changes, extracting shoreline positions to estimate shoreline change rates of the Nile delta coast around Rosetta Promontory. This method provides a viable means for examining long-term shoreline changes. Four categories, including seawater, developed (agriculture and urban), sabkhas (salt-flat), and undeveloped areas, were selected to evaluate their temporal changes by comparing the four selected images. Supervised classification technique was used with support vector machine algorithm to detect temporal changes. The overall accuracy assessment of this method ranged from 97% to 100%. In addition, the shoreline was extracted by applying two different techniques. The first method is based on a histogram threshold of Band 5, and the other uses the combination of histogram threshold of Band 5 and two band ratios (Band 2/Band 4 and Band 2/Band 5). For land cover change detection from 1984 to 2014, it was found that the developed area that increased by 9% although the land in the study area has been contracted by 1.6% due to coastal erosion. The shoreline retreat rate has decreased more than 70% from 1984 to 2014. Nevertheless, it still suffers from significant erosion with a maximum rate of 37 m/year. In comparison to ground survey and different remote sensing techniques, the established trend of shoreline change extracted using histogram threshold was found to be closely consistent with these studies rather than combining band ratio with histogram threshold. Land 2015-03-17 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010216 216 230 2073-445X 2015-03-17 doi: 10.3390/land4010216 Ali Masria Kazuo Nadaoka Abdelazim Negm Moheb Iskander http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/197 Savanna ecosystems are geographically extensive and both ecologically and economically important; they therefore require monitoring over large spatial extents. There are, in particular, large areas within southern Africa savanna ecosystems that lack consistent geospatial data on vegetation morphological properties, which is a prerequisite for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management of ecological resources. Given the challenges involved in distinguishing and mapping savanna vegetation assemblages using remote sensing, the objective of this study was to develop a vegetation morphology map for the largest protected area in Africa, the central Kalahari. Six vegetation morphology classes were developed and sample training/validation pixels were selected for each class by analyzing extensive in situ data on vegetation structural and functional properties, in combination with existing ancillary data and coarse scale land cover products. The classification feature set consisted of annual and intra annual matrices derived from 14 years of satellite-derived vegetation indices images, and final classification was achieved using an ensemble tree based classifier. All vegetation morphology classes were mapped with high accuracy and the overall classification accuracy was 91.9%. Besides filling the geospatial data gap for the central Kalahari area, this vegetation morphology map is expected to serve as a critical input to ecological studies focusing on habitat use by wildlife and the efficacy of game fencing, as well as contributing to sustainable ecosystem management in the central Kalahari. Land 2015-03-10 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010197 197 215 2073-445X 2015-03-10 doi: 10.3390/land4010197 Niti Mishra Kelley Crews Jennifer Miller Thoralf Meyer http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/182 Section 404 of the U.S. Clean Water Act includes most wetlands in its jurisdiction and requires wetland mitigation to compensate for permitted wetland losses. These mitigation wetlands can provide ecosystem services similar to original wetlands if properly constructed. Improvement of wetland monitoring requirements coupled with economic assessment is critical for effective implementation of the mitigation policy. The economic assessment when left out of evaluation of mitigation policy could result in mitigation wetlands being given too little weight in policy decisions. Under the assumption that mitigation requirements reported in the Army Corps permit files represent actual wetland creation, ecosystem services value is estimated using a wetland benefit‑function transfer approach. Wetland mitigation requirements during 2010–2012 recorded in the Army Corps permit files is used for the analysis. The results indicate that cumulative ecosystem services value per acre per year is in the range of $5000 to $70,000, which translates to a nationwide annual aggregate benefit of $2.7 billion. Given the history of the ecosystem services not fully captured nor adequately quantified, the current analysis is an initial step in understanding the value of wetland mitigation. Land 2015-03-06 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010182 182 196 2073-445X 2015-03-06 doi: 10.3390/land4010182 Naveen Adusumilli http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/157 The environment of the mountain-steppe-taiga of northern Mongolia is often characterized as marginal because of the high altitude, highly variable precipitation levels, low winter temperatures, and periodic droughts coupled with severe winter storms (known as dzuds). Despite these conditions, herders have inhabited this landscape for thousands of years, and hunter-gatherer-fishers before that. One way in which the risks associated with such a challenging and variable landscape are mitigated is through social networks and inter-family cooperation. We present an agent-based simulation, Ger Grouper, to examine how households have mitigated these risks through cooperation. The Ger Grouper simulation takes into account locational decisions of households, looks at fission/fusion dynamics of households and how those relate to environmental pressures, and assesses how degrees of relatedness can influence sharing of resources during harsh winters. This model, coupled with the traditional archaeological and ethnographic methods, helps shed light on the links between early Mongolian pastoralist adaptations and the environment. While preliminary results are promising, it is hoped that further development of this model will be able to characterize changing land-use patterns as social and political networks developed. Land 2015-03-03 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010157 157 181 2073-445X 2015-03-03 doi: 10.3390/land4010157 Julia Clark Stefani Crabtree http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/140 Fire is a naturally occurring process of most terrestrial ecosystems as well as a tool for changing land use. Since the beginning of history humans have used fire as a mechanism for creating areas suitable for agriculture and settlement. As fires threaten human dominated landscapes, fire risk itself has become a driver of landscape change, impacting landscapes through land use regulations and fire management. Land use changes also influence fire ignition frequency and fuel loads and hence alters fire regimes. The impact of these changes is often exacerbated as new land users demand alternative fire management strategies, which can impact land cover and management far from where land use change has actually occurred. This creates nuanced land use teleconnections between source areas for fires and economic cores, which demand and fund fire protection. Here we will review the role of fire and fire risk as a driver of land use change, the ways land use changes impact drivers of fire, and suggest that the integration of land use teleconnections into the fire/land use discussion can help us better understand and manage the complex interactions between fire and land use. Land 2015-02-25 4 1 Review 10.3390/land4010140 140 156 2073-445X 2015-02-25 doi: 10.3390/land4010140 Van Butsic Maggi Kelly Max Moritz http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/119 The National REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation-Plus) Strategy in Indonesia highlights the importance of local participation and the reform of land tenure in the success of forest conservation. National parks are a main target area for REDD+. National parks in Indonesia have been suffering from forest destruction and conflicts between governments and local communities. This study investigated: (1) the historical process of developing the REDD+ project in collaboration with multiple stakeholders including government authorities, local NGOs, and local people; (2) the social and economic impacts of the REDD+ project on local people; and (3) the local awareness of and motivations to participate in the REDD+ project in Meru Betiri National Park in Indonesia. Interviews of stakeholders including village leaders, NGO staff, and park staff were conducted to obtain an overview of the REDD+ project in the national park. Interviews with a questionnaire were also conducted among randomly selected heads of households who participated or did not participate in the REDD+ project and lived adjacent to the national park. Our analysis revealed that participants in the project obtained the right to use illegally harvested bared lands for intercropping while planting trees to recover forest ecosystems inside the national park. This opportunity could have contributed to a drastic increase in income, particularly for economically disadvantaged people, and to the recovery of forest ecosystems. Although local people did not fully recognize the meaning of REDD+ or carbon credits, they were enthusiastic to join in managing and patrolling forests because of their satisfaction with the income generated by the national park. However, the challenge is how both the recovery of forests and income generation from the project can be maintained in a situation of insufficient funding from donors and unsettled arguments about the benefit of sharing carbon credits with local people. Land 2015-02-24 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010119 119 139 2073-445X 2015-02-24 doi: 10.3390/land4010119 Kazuhiro Harada Dede Prabowo Arif Aliadi Jun Ichihara Hwan-Ok Ma http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/83 Canadian forests are often perceived as pristine and among the last remaining wilderness, but the majority of them are officially managed and undergo direct land use, mostly for wood harvest. This land use has modified their functions and properties, often inadvertently (e.g., age structure) but sometimes purposefully (e.g., fire suppression). Based on a review of the literature pertaining to carbon cycling, climate regulation, and disturbances from logging, fire, and insect outbreaks, we propose five scientific principles relevant for Canadian managed forests. Among these, a principle we wish to highlight is the need to properly account for the management-related fossil fuel emissions, because they will affect the global carbon cycle and climate for millennia unless massive atmospheric carbon dioxide removal becomes a reality. We also use these five principles to address questions of current interest to research scientists, forest managers, and policy makers. Our review focusses on total ecosystem carbon storage and various mechanisms through which forests affect climate, in particular albedo and aerosols forcings—including how disturbances influence all these elements—but also touches on other ecosystem goods and services. Our review underscores the importance of conducting >100-year time horizon studies of carbon cycling, climate regulation, and disturbances in Canadian managed forests. Land 2015-01-21 4 1 Review 10.3390/land4010083 83 118 2073-445X 2015-01-21 doi: 10.3390/land4010083 Jean-Sébastien Landry Navin Ramankutty http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/45 The aim of this paper is to explore possible links between forest cover change and characteristics of social-ecological systems at sub-national scale based mainly on census data. We assessed relationships between population density, poverty, ethnicity, accessibility and forest cover change during the last decade for four regions of Bolivia and the Lao PDR, combining a parcel-based with a cell-based approach. We found that accessibility is a key driver of forest cover change, yet it has the effect of intensifying other economic and policy-related underlying drivers, like colonization policies, cash crop demand, but also policies that lead to forest gain in one case. Poverty does not appear as a driver of deforestation, but the co-occurrence of poverty and forest loss driven by external investments appears critical in terms of social-ecological development. Ethnicity was found to be a moderate explanatory of forest cover change, but appears as a cluster of converging socio-economic characteristics related with settlement history and land resource access. The identification of such clusters can help ordering communities into a typology of social-ecological systems, and discussing their possible outcomes in light of a critical view on forest transition theory, as well as the relevance and predictive power of the variables assessed. Résumé: L'objectif de cet article est d'explorer les liens entre le changement de la couverture forestière et les caractéristiques des systèmes socio-écologiques à l'échelle nationale, principalement à l'aide de données de recensement. Nous avons évalué les relations entre la densité de population, la pauvreté, l'ethnicité, l'accessibilité et le changement de la couverture forestière pendant la dernière décennie pour quatre régions de Bolivie et du Laos, en combinant des approches par parcelles et par cellules. Nous avons constaté que l'accessibilité est un facteur clé du changement de la couverture forestière, tandis qu'elle a pour effet d'intensifier d'autres facteurs économiques et politiques sous-jacents, comme les politiques de colonisation, la demande de cultures de rente, mais aussi, dans un cas, des politiques conduisant à un accroissement de la forêt. La pauvreté n'apparait pas comme un facteur de déforestation, mais la co-occurrence de la pauvreté et de la perte de forêt entrainée par les investissements extérieurs semble critique en termes de développement socio-écologique. L'ethnicité se révèle être modérément explicative du changement de la couverture forestière, mais elle apparait comme un ensemble de caractéristiques socio-économiques convergentes liées à l'histoire de l'implantation humaine et à l'accès aux ressources foncières. L'identification de tels ensembles peut aider à classer les communautés selon une typologie des systèmes socio-écologiques, et à discuter leurs possibles impacts sur la forêt avec un point de vue critique sur la théorie de la transition forestière, ainsi que la pertinence et la puissance prédictive des variables évaluées. Land 2015-01-20 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010045 45 82 2073-445X 2015-01-20 doi: 10.3390/land4010045 Sébastien Boillat Hy Dao Patrick Bottazzi Yuri Sandoval Abraham Luna Sithong Thongmanivong Louca Lerch Joan Bastide Andreas Heinimann Frédéric Giraut http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/22 Severe land degradation has strongly affected both people's livelihood and the environment in Cape Verde (Cabo Verde in Portuguese), a natural resource poor country. Despite the enormous investment in soil and water conservation measures (SWC or SLM), which are visible throughout the landscape, and the recognition of their benefits, their biophysical and socioeconomic impacts have been poorly assessed and scientifically documented. This paper contributes to filling this gap, by bringing together insights from literature and policy review, field survey and participatory assessment in the Ribeira Seca Watershed through a concerted approach devised by the DESIRE project (the "Desire approach"). Specifically, we analyze government strategies towards building resilience against the harsh conditions, analyze the state of land degradation and its drivers, survey and map the existing SWC measures, and assess their effectiveness against land degradation, on crop yield and people's livelihood. We infer that the relative success of Cape Verde in tackling desertification and rural poverty owes to an integrated governance strategy that comprises raising awareness, institutional framework development, financial resource allocation, capacity building, and active participation of rural communities. We recommend that specific, scientific-based monitoring and assessment studies be carried out on the biophysical and socioeconomic impact of SLM and that the "Desire approach" be scaled-up to other watersheds in the country. Land 2015-01-14 4 1 Review 10.3390/land4010022 22 44 2073-445X 2015-01-14 doi: 10.3390/land4010022 Isaurinda Baptista Luuk Fleskens Coen Ritsema António Querido Jacques Tavares António Ferreira Eduardo Reis Samuel Gomes Anabela Varela http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/19 The editors of Land would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for assessing manuscripts in 2014:[...] Land 2015-01-08 4 1 Editorial 10.3390/land4010019 19 21 2073-445X 2015-01-08 doi: 10.3390/land4010019 Land Editorial Office http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/1/1 The National Geomatics Center of China (NGCC) produced Global Land Cover (GlobalLand30) maps with 30 m spatial resolution for the years 2000 and 2009–2010, responding to the need for harmonized, accurate, and high-resolution global land cover data. This study aims to assess the mapping accuracy of the land surface water layer of GlobalLand30 for 2009–2010. A representative Mediterranean region, situated in Greece, is considered as the case study area, with 2009 as the reference year. The assessment is realized through an object-based comparison of the GlobalLand30 water layer with the ground truth and visually interpreted data from the Hellenic Cadastre fine spatial resolution (0.5 m) orthophoto map layer. GlobCover 2009, GlobCorine 2009, and GLCNMO 2008 corresponding thematic layers are utilized to show and quantify the progress brought along with the increment of the spatial resolution, from 500 m to 300 m and finally to 30 m with the newly produced GlobalLand30 maps. GlobalLand30 detected land surface water areas show a 91.9% overlap with the reference data, while the coarser resolution products are restricted to lower accuracies. Validation is extended to the drainage network elements, i.e., rivers and streams, where GlobalLand30 outperforms the other global map products, as well. Land 2014-12-23 4 1 Article 10.3390/land4010001 1 18 2073-445X 2014-12-23 doi: 10.3390/land4010001 Ioannis Manakos Konstantinos Chatzopoulos-Vouzoglanis Zisis Petrou Lachezar Filchev Antonis Apostolakis http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/4/1284 Crown diameter and tree density were measured in 52 communities in the Sudan-Sahel using satellite imagery to determine the relationships between rainfall and distance from community center to crown size diameter and tree density. As distance from the community center increased, tree density and crown diameter decreased. As rainfall increased, tree density decreased while crown diameter increased. Distance from the community center is a proxy for age since urbanization and our results indicate that older parts of communities show longer and more consistent tree management. The trends in patterns of tree distribution and size in communities are different from those in natural woodlands. Land 2014-12-04 3 4 Communication 10.3390/land3041284 1284 1292 2073-445X 2014-12-04 doi: 10.3390/land3041284 Sarah Sterling Blair Orr http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/4/1270 The objectives of this study are to: (1) evaluate accuracy of tree height measurements of manual stereo viewing on a computer display using digital aerial photographs compared with airborne LiDAR height measurements; and (2) develop an empirical model to estimate stand-level aboveground biomass with variables derived from manual stereo viewing on the computer display in a Cambodian tropical seasonal forest. We evaluate observation error of tree height measured from the manual stereo viewing, based on field measurements. RMSEs of tree height measurement with manual stereo viewing and LiDAR were 1.96 m and 1.72 m, respectively. Then, stand-level aboveground biomass is regressed against tree height indices derived from the manual stereo viewing. We determined the best model to estimate aboveground biomass in terms of the Akaike's information criterion. This was a model of mean tree height of the tallest five trees in each plot (R2 = 0.78; RMSE = 58.18 Mg/ha). In conclusion, manual stereo viewing on the computer display can measure tree height accurately and is useful to estimate aboveground stand biomass. Land 2014-11-14 3 4 Article 10.3390/land3041270 1270 1283 2073-445X 2014-11-14 doi: 10.3390/land3041270 Katsuto Shimizu Tetsuji Ota Tsuyoshi Kajisa Nobuya Mizoue Shigejiro Yoshida Gen Takao Yasumasa Hirata Naoyuki Furuya Takio Sano Sokh Heng Ma Vuthy http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/4/1251 This philosophical paper explores the aesthetic argument for landscape conservation. The main claim is that the experience of beautiful landscapes is an essential part of the good human life. Beautiful landscapes make us feel at home in the world. Their great and irreplaceable value lies therein. To establish this claim, the concepts of landscape and "Stimmung" are clarified. It is shown how "Stimmung" (in the sense of mood) is infused into landscape (as atmosphere) and how we respond to it aesthetically. We respond by resonating or feeling at home. The paper ends by indicating how art can help us to better appreciate landscape beauty. This is done by way of an example from contemporary nature poetry, Michael Donhauser's Variationen in Prosa, which begins with "Und was da war, es nahm uns an" ("And what was there accepted us"). Land 2014-11-05 3 4 Essay 10.3390/land3041251 1251 1269 2073-445X 2014-11-05 doi: 10.3390/land3041251 Angelika Krebs http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/4/1232 In-depth understanding about the vertical distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) density is crucial for carbon (C) accounting, C budgeting and designing appropriate C sequestration strategies. We examined the vertical distribution of SOC density under different land use/land cover (LULC) types, altitudinal zones and aspect directions in a montane ecosystem of Bhutan. Sampling sites were located using conditioned Latin hypercube sampling (cLHS) scheme. Soils were sampled based on genetic horizons. An equal-area spline function was fitted to interpolate the target values to predetermined depths. Linear mixed model was fitted followed by mean separation tests. The results show some significant effects of LULC, altitudinal zone and slope aspect on the vertical distribution of SOC density in the profiles. Based on the proportion of mean SOC density in the first 20 cm relative to the cumulative mean SOC density in the top meter, the SOC density under agricultural lands (34%) was more homogeneously distributed down the profiles than forests (39%), grasslands (59%) and shrublands (43%). Similarly, the SOC density under 3500–4000 m zone (35%) was more uniformly distributed compared to 3000–3500 m zone (43%) and 1769–2500 m and 2500–3000 m zones (41% each). Under different aspect directions, the north and east-facing slopes (38% each) had more uniform distribution of SOC density than south (40%) and west-facing slopes (49%). Land 2014-10-10 3 4 Article 10.3390/land3041232 1232 1250 2073-445X 2014-10-10 doi: 10.3390/land3041232 Tshering Dorji Inakwu Odeh Damien Field http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/4/1214 Land cover change impacts ecosystem function across the globe. The use of land cover data is vital in the detection of these changes over time; however, most available land cover products, such as the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), are produced relatively infrequently. The most recent NLCD at the time of this research was produced in 2006 and does not adequately reflect the impact of land cover changes that have occurred since, including the occurrence of two large wildfires in 2008 in our study area. Therefore, there is a need for the classification of historical remotely sensed data, such as Landsat scenes, through replicable methods. While it is possible to collect field data coinciding with current or future Landsat acquisitions, it is impossible to retrospectively collect data for previous years; thus, fewer studies have focused on the classification of historical scenes. Using a single year of field reference and multi-year aerial photography data, we applied a simple decision tree classifier to accurately classify historic satellite data and produced maps of land cover to incorporate the effects of 2008 wildfires occurring between NLCD production dates. Overall accuracy ranged from 76 to 90 percent and was assessed using conventional error matrices. Land 2014-09-26 3 4 Article 10.3390/land3041214 1214 1231 2073-445X 2014-09-26 doi: 10.3390/land3041214 Katherine Morrison Crystal Kolden http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1180 In the context of sustainable urban development, the application of selected indicators integrated with scenario simulation and analysis can contribute to evidence-based decision making. This paper discusses the application of land use modelling and opportunity mapping approaches to evaluate regional development scenarios for the Greater Dublin Region in the period to 2026 evolving from research initially developed with the Dublin Regional Authority. This involved the simulation of four different future regional development scenarios using an adapted version of the MOLAND model with opportunity maps based on combined spatial indicators corresponding to these scenarios. The results produce valuable information for policy makers and planners assisting the evaluation of the consequences of their decisions in both a spatial and temporal context. This paper aims to show how current and future planning and economic policy can make targeted and evidence-based policy interventions and achieve resource efficiencies through the use of scenario analysis. Land 2014-09-19 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031180 1180 1213 2073-445X 2014-09-19 doi: 10.3390/land3031180 Harutyun Shahumyan Brendan Williams Laura Petrov Walter Foley http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1158 We build upon much of the accumulated knowledge of the widely used SLEUTH urban land change model and offer advances. First, we use SLEUTH's exclusion/attraction layer to identify and test different urban land cover change drivers; second, we leverage SLEUTH's self-modification capability to incorporate a demographic model; and third, we develop a validation procedure to quantify the influence of land cover change drivers and assess uncertainty. We found that, contrary to our a priori expectations, new development is not attracted to areas serviced by existing or planned water and sewer infrastructure. However, information about where population and employment growth is likely to occur did improve model performance. These findings point to the dominant role of centrifugal forces in post-industrial cities like Baltimore, MD. We successfully developed a demographic model that allowed us to constrain the SLEUTH model forecasts and address uncertainty related to the dynamic relationship between changes in population and employment and urban land use. Finally, we emphasize the importance of model validation. In this work the validation procedure played a key role in rigorously assessing the impacts of different exclusion/attraction layers and in assessing uncertainty related to population and employment forecasts. Land 2014-09-17 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031158 1158 1179 2073-445X 2014-09-17 doi: 10.3390/land3031158 Claire Jantz Scott Drzyzga Michael Maret http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1137 In many Sub-Saharan African countries, fuelwood collection is among the most important drivers of deforestation and particularly forest degradation. In a detailed field study in the Kafa region of southern Ethiopia, we assessed the potential of efficient cooking stoves to mitigate the negative impacts of fuelwood harvesting on forests. Eleven thousand improved cooking stoves (ICS), specifically designed for baking Ethiopia's staple food injera, referred to locally as "Mirt" stoves, have been distributed here. We found a high acceptance rate of the stove. One hundred forty interviews, including users and non-users of the ICS, revealed fuelwood savings of nearly 40% in injera preparation compared to the traditional three-stone fire, leading to a total annual savings of 1.28 tons of fuelwood per household. Considering the approximated share of fuelwood from unsustainable sources, these savings translate to 11,800 tons of CO2 saved for 11,156 disseminated ICS, corresponding to the amount of carbon stored in over 30 ha of local forest. We further found that stove efficiency increased with longer injera baking sessions, which shows a way of optimizing fuelwood savings by adapted usage of ICS. Our study confirms that efficient cooking stoves, if well adapted to the local cooking habits, can make a significant contribution to the conservation of forests and the avoidance of carbon emission from forest clearing and degradation. Land 2014-09-16 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031137 1137 1157 2073-445X 2014-09-16 doi: 10.3390/land3031137 Elisabeth Dresen Ben DeVries Martin Herold Louis Verchot Robert Müller http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1091 The Adelaide-Mt Lofty Region of South Australia is an exemplar, in microcosm, of the issues confronting biodiversity conservation in a world of increasing population and a drying, fire-prone environment. At just 0.1% of Australia's terrestrial land mass, this area is largely peninsular and oriented along a spine of ranges to 730-m elevation. Annual average rainfall varies from over 1100 mm in the hills to less than 500 mm on the plains in the north. The original vegetation varied from grasslands to shrublands to grassy and shrubby woodlands to forests, but now includes a major capital city and a mixed farming hinterland. Biodiversity in the region is in decline, and many species' extinctions have been recorded. With increasing population and a drying climate, fire antecedents, like ignition and fire danger, are predicted to increase the area burned in the wetter regions, but such predictions may be offset by increasing the fire protection of the expanding population and their economic and social assets. While the existing system of many small reserves will remain the backbone of biodiversity conservation in the region, wider recognition of the all-tenure, whole-of-landscape, whole-of-community approach to biodiversity conservation and fire management is needed if the probability of further extinctions is to be reduced. Land 2014-09-09 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031091 1091 1136 2073-445X 2014-09-09 doi: 10.3390/land3031091 A. Gill David McKenna Michael Wouters http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1075 The Sahel has been the focus of scientific interest in environmental-human dynamics and interactions. The objective of the present study is to contribute to the recent debate on the re-greening of Sahel. The paper examines the dynamics of barren land in the Sahel of Burkina Faso through analysis of remotely-sensed and rainfall data from 1975–2011. Discussions with farmers and land management staff have helped to understand the anthropogenic efforts toward soil restoration to enable the subsistence farming agriculture. Results showed that area of barren land has been fluctuating during the study period with approximately 10-year cyclicity. Similarly, rainfall, both at national and local levels has followed the same trends. The trends of the area of barren land and rainfall variability suggest that when rainfall increases, the area of barren land decreases and barren land increases when rainfall decreases. This implies that rainfall is one of the main factors driving the change in area of barren land. In addition, humans have contributed positively and negatively to the change by restoring barren lands for agriculture using locally known techniques and by accelerating land degradation through intensive and inappropriate land use practices. Land 2014-09-03 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031075 1075 1090 2073-445X 2014-09-03 doi: 10.3390/land3031075 Issa Ouedraogo Jürgen Runge Joachim Eisenberg Jennie Barron Séraphine Sawadogo-Kaboré http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1059 The rapid economic growth in Lao PDR over the last two decades has been driven by the natural resource sectors and commercialization in the agriculture sector. Rural landscapes are being transformed over the past decade from land use mosaics of subsistence and smallholder farms to large-scale plantations dominated by a few commercial crops. The capacity of these commercial agriculture plantations to alleviate rural poverty, part of the Government of Lao PDR's national development policy, is increasingly weighed against its long-term impacts on ecosystem services and sustainability of land and forest resources. We used an extended cost-benefit approach (CBA) to integrate certain environmental elements to traditional financial analysis for a comparative look at four land use systems in the northern part of the country. The CBA results demonstrate that commercial agriculture (maize and rubber plantations) does have the potential to support poverty alleviation in the short-run. It, however, exposes the land to serious environmental risks. By comparison, the traditional land uses studied (upland rice farming and non-timber forest products collecting) are largely subsistence activities that are still considered as sustainable, though this is increasingly affected by changing market and population dynamics. The results suggest that longer-term environmental costs can potentially cancel out short-term gains from the commercialization to mono-crop agriculture. Incentives for conserving ecosystem services (such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism) may have a potential role in supporting diversification of traditional livelihoods and increasing the competitiveness of maintaining forests. Land 2014-09-01 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031059 1059 1074 2073-445X 2014-09-01 doi: 10.3390/land3031059 Grace Wong Souphith Darachanthara Thanongsai Soukkhamthat http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1037 Currently, many studies on benefit sharing mechanisms (BSM) and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (REDD+) focus on poverty alleviation and livelihood development. However, relatively few studies incorporate an integrated livelihood framework. This study employs the sustainable livelihoods framework to assess the impact of BSM in Vietnam. The lessons learned could be used in creating social safeguards for REDD+. The communities in Central Vietnam involved in BSM were impacted by the programme on various dimensions. These dimensions, expressed in different types of capital, are interconnected and contribute to a person's well-being. While the communities have restricted access to their natural forests, they benefited in terms of income diversification, knowledge improvement and network expansion. On the other hand, they faced food insecurity, they were more vulnerable to natural hazards, and their human, social and cultural capital faced risk of deterioration. Land 2014-08-22 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031037 1037 1058 2073-445X 2014-08-22 doi: 10.3390/land3031037 Mucahid Bayrak Tran Tu Lawal Marafa http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1015 A stepwise multi regression-based statistics was employed for prioritizing the influence of several factors, anthropogenic and/or natural, on the ERA15 temperature increments. The 5 factors that are defined as predictors are: topography, aerosol index (TOMS-AI), tropospheric vertical velocity along with two anthropogenic factors, population density and land use changes (Land Use Change Index (LUCI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) trends). The seismic hazard assessment factor was also chosen as the "dummy variable" for validity. Special focus was given to the land use change factor, which was based on two different data sets; Human Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems (HITE) data of historical land use/land cover data and of NDVI trends during 1982 and 1991. The increment analysis updates of temperature, increments analysis update (IAU) (T), the predicted variable, was obtained from the ERA15 (1979–1993) reanalysis. The research consists of both spatial and vertical analyses, as well as the potential synergies of selected variables. The spatial geographic analysis is divided into three categories; (1) coarse region; (2) subregion analysis; and (c) a "small cell" of 4° × 4° analysis covering the global domain. It is shown that the following three factors, topography, TOMS-AI and NDVI, are statistically significant (at the p < 0.05 level) in the relationship with the IAU (T), which means that they are the most effective predictors of IAU (T), especially at the 700-hPa level during March–June. The 850-hPa level presents the weakest contribution to IAU (T), probably due to the contradicting influences of the various variables at this level. It was found that the land use effect, as expressed by the NDVI trends factor, shows a strong decrease with height and is one of the most influential near-surface factors over the East Mediterranean (EM), which explains up to 20% of the temperature increments in January at 700 hPa. Moreover, its influence is significant (p < 0.05) through all of the different stages of the multiple regression runs, a major finding not quantified earlier. The choice of monthly means was found to be not optimal, particularly for the tropospheric vertical velocity, due to the averaging of the synoptic systems within a month. Land 2014-08-22 3 3 Article 10.3390/land3031015 1015 1036 2073-445X 2014-08-22 doi: 10.3390/land3031015 Tali Hirsch-Eshkol Anat Baharad Pinhas Alpert