IIASA - Land Use Change

IIASA - Land Use Change

Land-use and land-cover change are significant to a range of themes and issues central to the study of global environmental change. Alterations in the earth’s surface hold major implications for the global radiation balance and energy fluxes, contribute to changes in biogeochemical cycles, alter hydrological cycles, and influence ecological balances and complexity. Through these environmental impacts at local, regional and global levels, land-use and land-cover changes driven by human activity have the potential to significantly affect food security and the sustainability of the world agricultural and forest product supply systems.

Independent of long-term global cumulative dimensions, changes in land use and land cover will have profound regional environmental implications, such as alterations in surface runoff dynamics, lowering of groundwater tables, impacts on rates and types of land degradation, and reduced biodiversity. It is therefore widely recognized that an understanding of changes in land and water use over a time span of the next 30–50 years is central to the debate of sustainability.