Farmers in the Sahel have always been facing climatic variability at intra- and inter-annual and decadal time scales. While coping and adaptation strategies have traditionally included crop ...diversification, mobility, livelihood diversification, and migration, singling out climate as a direct driver of changes is not so simple. Using focus group interviews and a household survey, this study analyzes the perceptions of climate change and the strategies for coping and adaptation by sedentary farmers in the savanna zone of central Senegal. Households are aware of climate variability and identify wind and occasional excess rainfall as the most destructive climate factors. Households attribute poor livestock health, reduced crop yields and a range of other problems to climate factors, especially wind. However, when questions on land use and livelihood change are not asked directly in a climate context, households and groups assign economic, political, and social rather than climate factors as the main reasons for change. It is concluded that the communities studied have a high awareness of climate issues, but climatic narratives are likely to influence responses when questions mention climate. Change in land use and livelihood strategies is driven by adaptation to a range of factors of which climate appears not to be the most important. Implications for policy-making on agricultural and economic development will be to focus on providing flexible options rather than specific solutions to uncertain climate.
Urban land teleconnections and sustainability Seto, Karen C; Reenberg, Anette; Boone, Christopher G ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
05/2012, Letnik:
109, Številka:
20
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This paper introduces urban land teleconnections as a conceptual framework that explicitly links land changes to underlying urbanization dynamics. We illustrate how three key themes that are ...currently addressed separately in the urban sustainability and land change literatures can lead to incorrect conclusions and misleading results when they are not examined jointly: the traditional system of land classification that is based on discrete categories and reinforces the false idea of a rural–urban dichotomy; the spatial quantification of land change that is based on place-based relationships, ignoring the connections between distant places, especially between urban functions and rural land uses; and the implicit assumptions about path dependency and sequential land changes that underlie current conceptualizations of land transitions. We then examine several environmental "grand challenges" and discuss how urban land teleconnections could help research communities frame scientific inquiries. Finally, we point to existing analytical approaches that can be used to advance development and application of the concept.
Land change science has emerged as a fundamental component of global environmental change and sustainability research. This interdisciplinary field seeks to understand the dynamics of land cover and ...land use as a coupled human-environment system to address theory, concepts, models, and applications relevant to environmental and societal problems, including the intersection of the two. The major components and advances in land change are addressed: observation and monitoring; understanding the coupled system-causes, impacts, and consequences; modeling; and synthesis issues. The six articles of the special feature are introduced and situated within these components of study.
Hotspots of land use change in Europe Kuemmerle, Tobias; Levers, Christian; Erb, Karlheinz ...
Environmental research letters,
06/2016, Letnik:
11, Številka:
6
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Assessing changes in the extent and management intensity of land use is crucial to understanding land-system dynamics and their environmental and social outcomes. Yet, changes in the spatial patterns ...of land management intensity, and thus how they might relate to changes in the extent of land uses, remains unclear for many world regions. We compiled and analyzed high-resolution, spatially-explicit land-use change indicators capturing changes in both the extent and management intensity of cropland, grazing land, forests, and urban areas for all of Europe for the period 1990–2006. Based on these indicators, we identified hotspots of change and explored the spatial concordance of area versus intensity changes. We found a clear East–West divide with regard to agriculture, with stronger cropland declines and lower management intensity in the East compared to the West. Yet, these patterns were not uniform and diverging patterns of intensification in areas highly suitable for farming, and disintensification and cropland contraction in more marginal areas emerged. Despite the moderate overall rates of change, many regions in Europe fell into at least one land-use change hotspot during 1990–2006, often related to a spatial reorganization of land use (i.e., co-occurring area decline and intensification or co-occurring area increase and disintensification). Our analyses highlighted the diverse spatial patterns and heterogeneity of land-use changes in Europe, and the importance of jointly considering changes in the extent and management intensity of land use, as well as feedbacks among land-use sectors. Given this spatial differentiation of land-use change, and thus its environmental impacts, spatially-explicit assessments of land-use dynamics are important for context-specific, regionalized land-use policy making.
Semi-arid areas, defined as those areas of the world where water is an important limitation for plant growth, have become the subject of increased interest due to the impacts of current global ...changes and sustainability of human lifestyles. While many ground-based reports of declining vegetation productivity have been published over the last decades, a number of recent publications have shown a nuanced and, for some regions, positive picture. With this background, the paper provides an analysis of trends in vegetation greenness of semi-arid areas using AVHRR GIMMS from 1981 to 2007. The vegetation index dataset is used as a proxy for vegetation productivity and trends are analyzed for characterization of changes in semi-arid vegetation greenness. Calculated vegetation trends are analyzed with gridded data on potential climatic constraints to plant growth to explore possible causes of the observed changes. An analysis of changes in the seasonal variation of vegetation greenness and climatic drivers is conducted for selected regions to further understand the causes of observed inter-annual vegetation changes in semi-arid areas across the globe. It is concluded that semi-arid areas, across the globe, on average experience an increase in greenness (0.015 NDVI units over the period of analysis). Further it is observed that increases in greenness are found both in semi-arid areas where precipitation is the dominating limiting factor for plant production (0.019 NDVI units) and in semi-arid areas where air temperature is the primarily growth constraint (0.013 NDVI units). Finally, in the analysis of changes in the intra-annual variation of greenness it is found that seemingly similar increases in greenness over the study period may have widely different explanations. This implies that current generalizations, claiming that land degradation is ongoing in semi-arid areas worldwide, are not supported by the satellite based analysis of vegetation greenness.
► Trends in dryland vegetation greenness (NDVI) based on AVHRR data are analyzed. ► Climatic constraints to plant growth are anlysed to study causes of NDVI changes. ► Global drylands on average experience an increase in NDVI from 1981 to 2007. ► Trends have regional specific explanations and generalizations are not supported.
Interactions between distant places are increasingly widespread and influential, often leading to unexpected outcomes with profound implications for sustainability. Numerous sustainability studies ...have been conducted within a particular place with little attention to the impacts of distant interactions on sustainability in multiple places. Although distant forces have been studied, they are usually treated as exogenous variables and feedbacks have rarely been considered. To understand and integrate various distant interactions better, we propose an integrated framework based on telecoupling, an umbrella concept that refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. The concept of telecoupling is a logical extension of research on coupled human and natural systems, in which interactions occur within particular geographic locations. The telecoupling framework contains five major interrelated components, i.e., coupled human and natural systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects. We illustrate the framework using two examples of distant interactions associated with trade of agricultural commodities and invasive species, highlight the implications of the framework, and discuss research needs and approaches to move research on telecouplings forward. The framework can help to analyze system components and their interrelationships, identify research gaps, detect hidden costs and untapped benefits, provide a useful means to incorporate feedbacks as well as trade-offs and synergies across multiple systems (sending, receiving, and spillover systems), and improve the understanding of distant interactions and the effectiveness of policies for socioeconomic and environmental sustainability from local to global levels.
Many international policies encourage a switch from fossil fuels to bioenergy based on the premise that its use would not result in carbon accumulation in the atmosphere. Frequently cited bioenergy ...goals would at least double the present global human use of plant material, the production of which already requires the dedication of roughly 75% of vegetated lands and more than 70% of water withdrawals. However, burning biomass for energy provision increases the amount of carbon in the air just like burning coal, oil or gas if harvesting the biomass decreases the amount of carbon stored in plants and soils, or reduces carbon sequestration. Neglecting this fact results in an accounting error that could be corrected by considering that only the use of ‘additional biomass’ – biomass from additional plant growth or biomass that would decompose rapidly if not used for bioenergy – can reduce carbon emissions. Failure to correct this accounting flaw will likely have substantial adverse consequences. The article presents recommendations for correcting greenhouse gas accounts related to bioenergy.
Complex Land Systems Dearing, John A.; Braimoh, Ademola K.; Reenberg, Anette ...
Ecology and society,
2010, Letnik:
15, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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The growing awareness about the need to anticipate the future of land systems focuses on how well we understand the interactions between society and environmental processes within a complexity ...framework. A major barrier to understanding is insufficient attention given to long (multidecadal) temporal perspectives on complex system behavior that can provide insights through both analog and evolutionary approaches. Analogs are useful in generating typologies of generic system behavior, whereas evolutionary assessments provide insight into site-specific system properties. Four dimensions of these properties: (1) trends and trajectories, (2) frequencies, thresholds and alternate steady states, (3) slow and fast processes, and (4) legacies and contingencies, are discussed. Compilations and analyses of past information and data from instruments and observations, palaeoenvironmental archives, and human and environmental history are now the subject of major international effort. The embedding of empirical information over multidecadal timescales in attempts to define and model sustainable and adaptive management of land systems is now not only possible, but also necessary.
Today, global land use is affected by a variety of factors, including urbanization and the growing interconnectedness of economies and markets. This book examines the challenges and opportunities we ...face in achieving sustainable land use in the twenty-first century. While land resources remain finite, the global population is projected to reach ten billion by the end of the century, bringing issues of ethics and fairness to center stage. Who should decide how land is used? Where does competition for land occur, and why? Moreover, accelerating globalization, increasing demand for animal protein in our diets, the need for new sources of energy, and the global scarcity of land have led to a decoupling of land use and local control, which raises issues of governance. The contributors, from a range of disciplines and countries, present new analytical perspectives and tools for understanding key issues in global land use. The chapters consider such topics as food production and land use; case studies of urbanization and agriculture in Brazil and China; telecoupling and connections to distant places; emerging institutions of land-use governance; public and private regulation of land use; uniquely urban issues of land use; and future steps to sustainability.ContributorsGraeme Auld, Anthony J. Bebbington, Tor A. Benjaminsen, Hilda Blanco, Christopher G. Boone, Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., Wang Chunyu, Ruth DeFries, Xiangzheng Deng, Hallie Eakin, Jennifer C. Franco, Bradford S. Gentry, Peter J. Gregory, Dagmar Haase, Helmut Haberl, Vanessa Hull, Carol A. Hunsberger, John S. I. Ingram, Elena G. Irwin, Anne-Marie Izac, Suzi Kerr, Jennifer Koch, Tobias Kuemmerle, Eric F. Lambin, Yingzhi Lin, Jianguo Liu, Shuaib Lwasa, Peter J. Marcotullio, Matias E. Margulis, Cheikh Mbow, Ole Mertz, Peter Messerli, Patrick Meyfroidt, Emilio Moran, Harini Nagendra, Stephan Pauleit, Steward T. A. Pickett, Tobias Plieninger, Charles L. Redman, Anette Reenberg, Ximena Rueda, Heike Schroeder, Karen C. Seto, Thomas Sikor, Simon R. Swaffield, Billie Lee Turner II, Caroline Upton, Birka Wicke, Makoto Yokohari, Karl Zimmerer
We discuss the adaptive cycle heuristic as a potential platform for describing the functioning and directions of change in Sahelian land use systems. Specifically, the aim is to go beyond the ...simplified narrative of a vicious circle of land degradation and land expansion prompted by population pressure and low rainfall and to develop conceptual means to account for system recovery and adaptation to exposures. We use a village study from northern Burkina Faso as an empirical point of departure. On the basis of information obtained from extensive interviews and surveys at the group and household level, the different phases of the adaptive cycle—exploitation (r), conservation (K), release (Ω) and reorganization (α)—are characterized by indicators of “potential” and “connectedness”. The main traits of an adaptive cycle trajectory are identified, yet deviations are also observed. It is, however, apparent that the traditional picture of a unidirectional process of land degradation and system collapse in Sahelian agro-pastoral systems is a simplification of more complex realities. The adaptive cycle heuristic provides insight into the possible importance of, for example, connectedness in terms of village groups. This may have implications for the policy discourse and may contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of trajectories of change in Sahelian systems.
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