A wide-ranging study of how different landownership models deliver sustainability in Scotland's upland areas Scotland is at the heart of modern, sustainable upland management. Large estates cover ...vast areas of the uplands, with a long, complex and emotive history of ownership and use. In recent decades, the Scottish uplands have increasingly been the arena for passionate debates over large-scale land management issues. Crucially, what kinds of ownership and management will best deliver sustainable futures for upland environments and communities? Although the globally unique dominance of private ownership remains a distinctive characteristic of Scotland's uplands, increasing numbers of estates are now owned by environmental NGOs and local communities, especially since the Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2003. A decade after the passage of this landmark Act, this book synthesises research carried out on a diverse range of upland estates by the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands. The findings from privately-owned estates as well as those owned by communities, charities and conservation groups will prove enlightening and relevant to upland managers, policy makers, and researchers across Britain and Europe.With the Scottish Government promoting a vision of environmental sustainability, and with the new diversity of ownerships and management now appearing, this timely and topical book investigates the implications of these different types of land ownership for sustainable upland management. Key Features: * Presents major new thinking on upland estate management * First dedicated textbook on upland estate management * Respected and experienced academic editorial team * An academic synthesis of theory and practical case-studies
•A representative hierarchical multi-criteria evaluation system for assessing land use competitiveness was constructed.•The intensity of potential land use conflict was mapped at pixel level and its ...spatiotemporal pattern was analyzed.•Actual land use changes support the effectiveness of our assessment model.
With the rapid urbanization in China, land resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Identifying and resolving land use conflict is essential for reasonably using land resources and achieving land sustainability. Taking the middle reaches of the Heihe River as an example, we included the constraints of local water resources to construct a multi-criteria evaluation system for assessing land use competitiveness in 2000 and 2015 based on land use, socio-economic, and nighttime light data. By comparing the competitiveness of cultivated land, construction land and ecological land, we then derived the spatiotemporal patterns of potential land use conflicts. Actual land use changes supported the hypothesis that land use tended to convert into the type with higher competitiveness at areas with intense conflict, which better indicated that our assessment model was effective. The results showed that the potential land use conflict was more acute in the central and northwest but weak in the southeast and northeast, and its pattern showed a significantly positive spatial autocorrelation. The conflict between cultivated land and construction land was most prominent and mainly occurred in the transitional zone from urban to rural areas. Rapid urban development and water shortage were the main causes of the potential land use conflict. Assessing land use multi-functions and making a tradeoff among ecological, economic, and social services will be an effective way to guide future land use to solve land use conflict. Our research provides scientific evidence for sustainable land use planning and management in the arid areas.
Urban land teleconnections and sustainability Seto, Karen C; Reenberg, Anette; Boone, Christopher G ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
05/2012, Volume:
109, Issue:
20
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
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.
Ecosystems services (ES) assessment is a significant scientific topic recognized for its potential to address sustainability issues. However, there is an absence of science-policy frameworks in land ...use planning that lead to the ES science being used in policy. China's Ecological Redline Policy (ERP) is one of the first national policies utilizing multiple ES, but there is no standardized approach for working across the science-policy interface. We propose a transdisciplinary framework to determine ecological redline areas (ERAs) in Shanghai using: ES, biodiversity and ecologically fragile hotspots, landscape structure, and stakeholder opinions. We determine the five criteria to identify ERAs for Shanghai using multi-temporal, high resolution images (0.5 m) and biophysical models. We examine ERP effectiveness by comparing land use scenarios for 2040. Compared to alternative land uses, ES increase significantly under the ERP. The inclusion of ES in spatial planning led stakeholders to increase terrestrial habitat protection by 174% in Shanghai. Our analysis suggests that strategic planning for ES could reduce tradeoffs between environmental quality and development.
Human appropriation analysis allows interrelating ecological and socioeconomic dimensions to be applied during the development of management strategies for increasing the sustainability of land uses. ...However, the design of such management strategies requires data reflecting site-specific conditions at sub-national levels. In this study, we assessed the dynamics of human appropriation using an exergy-based net primary production (HANPPEX) indicator. The results depicted positive (5–10 MJex/m2.y) HANPPEX changes for cropland areas in both regions. The harvested biomass and land-use changes were identified as responsible for high HANPPEX, which varied significantly between land cover types. In particular, cropland and urban/industrial yielded the highest HANPPEX compared to other land cover types. Accordingly, the land cover transition toward urban and agriculture land uses increased the HANPPEX for Ñuble and Biobío. The main HANPP differences found between regions were related to their socioeconomic characteristics as well as to the heterogeneity of land-use types, biomass structure, and regional biomass demand. Our findings provide insights on the magnitude and direction of NPP changes associated with human appropriation at the regional level, allowing a more detailed understanding of the efficiency with which humans utilize terrestrial natural resources.
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•Strategies for better land use sustainability need regional human appropriation data.•We used the exergy-based net primary production (HANPPEX) indicator for HA dynamics.•Urban and croplands had high HANPPEX upon spatial analysis of two Chilean regions.•Regional differences were from socioeconomic, land-use type, and biomass features.•Understanding regional HA-related NPP profiles may optimize natural resource use.
•Spatial mismatches between ecosystem services supply and demand increase over time due to urban sprawl and population growth.•Maps of supply-demand mismatches provide insights for land-use planning ...beyond administrative boundaries.•High-resolution quantitative methods of ecosystem services mapping facilitate multiscale land-use planning.
Global trends in land-use changes, including urbanization and abandonment of rural areas, have important repercussions for the supply and demand of ecosystem services (ES). In this study, we assessed and mapped the supply and demand of three ES (water provision, climate regulation, and outdoor recreation) along an urban-rural gradient in the Madrid region (Spain) from 1990 to 2012. We mapped ES supply, based on land use/land cover (LULC) data, using InVEST models and complementary methods, and ES demand, using population density and demand indicators. Then, we explored spatial supply-demand mismatches at a municipality spatial scale. Despite an increase in ES supply in some areas, a general increase in ES demand led to increasing dependence by the Madrid metropolitan area on outlying areas. We found that the number of municipalities that exhibited mismatches between the supply and demand in ES increased throughout the study period, due mainly to urban sprawl. Our results suggest the need for comprehensive land-use planning at the regional scale, taking into account that many ES flows reach beyond municipality boundaries. Finally, we discuss the utility of analyzing spatial mismatches in the supply and demand of ES for land-use planning and decision-making.
Although a detailed analysis of land use and land cover (LULC) change is essential in providing a greater understanding of increased human-environment interactions across the coastal region of ...Bangladesh, substantial challenges still exist for accurately classifying coastal LULC. This is due to the existence of high-level landscape heterogeneity and unavailability of good quality remotely sensed data. This study, the first of a kind, implemented a unique methodological approach to this challenge. Using freely available Landsat imagery, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost)-based informative feature selection and Random Forest classification is used to elucidate spatio-temporal patterns of LULC across coastal areas over a 28-year period (1990–2017). We show that the XGBoost feature selection approach effectively addresses the issue of high landscape heterogeneity and spectral complexities in the image data, successfully augmenting the RF model performance (providing a mean user’s accuracy > 0.82). Multi-temporal LULC maps reveal that Bangladesh’s coastal areas experienced a net increase in agricultural land (5.44%), built-up (4.91%) and river (4.52%) areas over the past 28 years. While vegetation cover experienced a net decrease (8.26%), an increasing vegetation trend was observed in the years since 2000, primarily due to the Bangladesh government’s afforestation initiatives across the southern coastal belts. These findings provide a comprehensive picture of coastal LULC patterns, which will be useful for policy makers and resource managers to incorporate into coastal land use and environmental management practices. This work also provides useful methodological insights for future research to effectively address the spatial and spectral complexities of remotely sensed data used in classifying the LULC of a heterogeneous landscape.
Pathways to coastal retreat Haasnoot, Marjolijn; Lawrence, Judy; Magnan, Alexandre K.
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
06/2021, Volume:
372, Issue:
6548
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The shrinking solution space for adaptation calls for long-term dynamic planning starting now
There is an urgent need to take coastal retreat more seriously as an option for adapting to sea level ...rise (SLR) and as a strategy capable of providing positive outcomes, if planned ahead. Early signs of such thinking are emerging. We demonstrate how exploring pathways to managed retreat adds value in the context of irreversible long-term SLR. Retreat is typically framed and understood as a single action, largely used after events rather than preemptively, and considered as a last resort. However, implementing managed retreat constitutes a multidecadal sequence of actions (i.e., across pathways) including community engagement, vulnerability assessment, land use planning, active retreat, compensation, and repurposing. This Policy Forum advances practical knowledge on what pathways to coastal retreat may look like and how they can pave the way for flexible and positive transformational adaptation, if started now.
Human activities and global changes have undergone significant transformations in land systems. It is imperative to comprehend the intricacies of land use transitions (LUT), as they serve as ...indicators of the evolving dynamics within the complex human-environmental relationship. In this study, we adopt the conflict-coordination theoretical framework to delve into the role of land-use conflicts (LUC) in driving LUT. Our investigation involves the quantification of LUT and the assessment of LUC within China, spanning from 1980 to 2020. Subsequently, we scrutinized the interplay between LUT and LUC using Spearman correlation analysis and the Wilcoxon test. Our findings reveal that greater diversity in land-use structure can be attributed to ecological land fragmentation and the restoration of unused land, while the expansion of urban and cropland areas contributes to a less diverse land-use pattern. Furthermore, there is a discernible upward trend in land use function. Although the overall degree of LUC in China is relatively mild, there is a noticeable upward trajectory over the past four decades. More pronounced conflicts within land-use patterns promote a diversified land-use pattern, while conflicts arising from competing land-use functions elevate the level of land-use functionality. Moreover, a dynamic interplay between land-use transitions and conflicts becomes evident, with intense conflicts within land-use patterns weakening land-use functionality, and imbalances in functionality driving greater diversity in land-use patterns. Our research introduces an innovative analytical framework that elucidates LUT through the lens of LUC, with the potential for broader applicability across different regions. This framework not only enhances our understanding of LUT but also provides valuable scientific guidance for the effective management of conflicts to promote the sustainable development of land resources.
•Land use transition (LUT) is assessed from aspects of structure and function.•We evaluate land use conflict (LUC) underlying structure and function in China.•The relationships between LUT and LUC are examined from 1980 to 2020.•LUC promotes LUT to achieve more diverse structure and high-level function.•The intense conflict of land use function leads to more diverse structure.
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