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Chapter 3: Understanding the Primary Causes of Land Use and Land Cover Change

Introduction

The ability to forecast land use and land cover change and, ultimately, to predict the consequences of change, depends on our ability to understand the past, current, and future drivers of land use and land cover change. These factors, as well as other emerging social and political factors may have significant effects on future land use and land cover. Patterns of land use and land cover change, and land management are shaped by the interaction of economic, environmental, social, political, and technological forces on local to global scales.   We must understand the primary modern and possible future drivers of land use change and their interrelationship with land management decisions and resource policies to develop projections of future land use and management decision outcomes under a range of economic, environmental, and social scenarios.   Improved process-based models of land use and land cover change dynamics in space and time are also needed and these should combine field-level case studies for analysis of processes and management systems, statistical studies for large regions, and empirical analyses using remote sensing at local to global scales. Linking between processes at these various scales will be an important research area.

Specific Research Goals

3.1 To understand the causes of land cover and land use change well enough to project change into the future and to assist policy makers in the design of potential interventions (Ongoing - 2 years for initial synthesis, Priority 1).

Causes of land use and land cover changes have been studied at different temporal and spatial scales and in different disciplines. The research community must synthesize existing studies to improve generalization, conceptualization, and theory of land use change science. Within the next two years a multi-disciplinary synthesis is needed to expose previous work that has originated in different disciplines to a wide inter-disciplinary audience. These syntheses should also identify information needs for global land use change assessments. Priorities should be set so that key policy-relevant questions are addressed.

Funding for this work should combine both top down and bottom up approaches. Research funds should provide individual investigators with the opportunity to propose original approaches to study land use and land cover change, as well as Requests For Proposals (RFPs) focused specifically to support the development of the community goals defined in this Science Strategy. Local process studies examining the drivers of land use change at the local scale need to be set in a broader conceptual framework.

3.2 To improve feedback between those collecting and processing data and those analyzing and modeling land use and land cover changes (On-going, First Workshops completed in 2 years, Priority2)

Improvements in investigating drivers and modeling of land use and land cover change will depend significantly on improvements in the available databases. Efficacy of data collection and processing efforts can be enhanced by stronger interaction between producers and users of the data. Feedbacks between these groups should be encouraged, given the many potential demands for land use and land cover data.   A series of workshops involving data collection specialists, database experts, and users of the data should be initiated to establish a better match data and information requirements and availability. The first workshops should be completed within two years and where possible should build on existing structures.

3.3 To improve understanding of the interrelationship of drivers of land use and land cover, land management, and resource policies, for use in environmental, economic and social scenarios (On-Going, 2 years for Initial Assessment, Priority 2)

A key research question is whether the major drivers and determinants of land use and land cover will change in the future, under a range of different environmental, economic, and social scenarios. Integration across disciplines will foster investigations of adaptation and mitigation options taking account of any significant interactions among causes of land use and land cover change and variability (both physical and socioeconomic). The current state of knowledge for understanding such interrelationships should be documented within the next two years, including how information can be used in risk assessments. To enhance the relevance of the research, scenario development needs to be developed closely with stakeholders. This work could be carried out with a series of workshops.

Timeline and Costs

Total cost to realize this research component focused on improving understanding of the primary drivers of change through case studies, syntheses, workshops over the next ten years is $12.5m, or an average of $1.25m per year.