Land System Change Research Articles

How will land degradation neutrality change future land system patterns? A scenario simulation study

Land degradation is a major global issue and achieving a land degradation-neutral world is one of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, striving for land degradation neutrality (LDN) is challenged by increasing claims on land resources and could result in major land use conflicts. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how LDN can be implemented in land system modelling and how achieving LDN alongside sufficient supplies of food, timber and shelter could affect future land system patterns, using the Republic of Turkey as a case study. We developed a LDN scenario with full implementation of the guidelines and a business-as-usual scenario without pursuing LDN, and compared the resulting differences in land system changes. Additionally, the influence of different elements of the LDN framework on the land use projections was tested. Our results show that although it is possible to achieve LDN in the context of increasing demands for resources and housing, it might require a considerable re-organization of the land systems. Intensification of annual cropland systems was the main driver of new land degradation, which was in the LDN scenario primarily counterbalanced by large areas of afforestation, while other land improvement options only played a minor role. To achieve a no-net-loss, about 20% of Turkey’s territory was afforested in our scenario, mainly claiming extensively used annual cropland (∼70%) and grassland (∼30%). All individual LDN principles had a substantial impact on the final land system patterns meaning that the final outcome is not the result of just one of the principles, it is affected by all. Our findings suggest that pursuing LDN under growing demands for land-based products could stimulate a land sparing approach which might have trade-offs with other sustainability dimensions. This highlights the need for local support and new solutions for rural areas, thereby avoiding poverty, migration and illegal use of restoration areas.

Prototyping a Methodology for Long-Term (1680–2100) Historical-to-Future Landscape Modeling for the Conterminous United States

Land system change has been identified as one of four major Earth system processes where change has passed a destabilizing threshold. A historical record of landscape change is required to understand the impacts change has had on human and natural systems, while scenarios of future landscape change are required to facilitate planning and mitigation efforts. A methodology for modeling long-term historical and future landscape change was applied in the Delaware River Basin of the United States. A parcel-based modeling framework was used to reconstruct historical landscapes back to 1680, parameterized with a variety of spatial and nonspatial historical datasets. Similarly, scenarios of future landscape change were modeled for multiple scenarios out to 2100. Results demonstrate the ability to represent historical land cover proportions and general patterns at broad spatial scales and model multiple potential future landscape trajectories. The resulting land cover collection provides consistent data from 1680 through 2100, at a 30-m spatial resolution, 10-year intervals, and high thematic resolution. The data are consistent with the spatial and thematic characteristics of widely used national-scale land cover datasets, facilitating use within existing land management and research workflows. The methodology demonstrated in the Delaware River Basin is extensible and scalable, with potential applications at national scales for the United States.

Land system transformations govern the trophic status of an urban wetland ecosystem: Perspectives from remote sensing and water quality analysis

AbstractGlobally, urban wetlands are facing immense pressure from land use land cover changes (LULCCs) and associated water quality degradation that is severely affecting the trophic status of these ecosystems. This study analyzed water quality degradation resulting from land system changes in the vicinity of Khushalsar, an urban Wetland, in Srinagar City from 1980 to 2017. The analysis of satellite data indicated that this Wetland lost ~18.1 ha from 1980 to 2017. During the same period, the urban area within the Wetland increased from 0.2% to 16.5%. The land cover changes assessed in the vicinity of Wetland indicated an increase of 119% and 62.8% in built‐up and roads respectively. The analysis of surface water quality of the Wetland showed widespread degradation. The Trophic state index ranged from 73.4 to 84.6 indicating hyper‐eutrophic waters. A snapshot of comparative water quality data from 2002 to 2018 revealed that the mean concentration of NO3−‐N increased from 219 to 433 μg L−1 and that of total phosphorus increased from 135.4 to 1,236 μg L−1 indicative of continuous nutrient enrichment. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) grouped eight sampling sites into four clusters based on likeliness of water quality characteristics. Similarly, discriminant analysis showed the formation of similar patterns of clusters, corroborating the HCA. Principal component analysis suggested three principal components accounting for a cumulative variance of 90.61%. The unplanned land system changes vis‐a‐vis human‐induced water quality degradation together with the lack of a monitoring mechanism have brought the Khushalsar Wetland to its current hyper‐eutrophic state.

Achieving Win–Win Solutions in Telecoupled Human–Land Systems

Telecoupling refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions between distant places. Telecoupling is becoming even more significant in the increasingly globalized world and it plays a key role in the emergence of major global environmental problems. In particular, it contributes to land degradation and the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, there is a lack of systematic examination of the impacts of telecoupling on land system change, and how to respond to the undesirable impacts. Based on CiteSpace Software, here we analyze the current research status of telecoupled human–land systems, including publications, major scientific research institutions, and research processes. We explore the impacts of telecoupling on land and how to respond to these impacts. Finally, we propose a framework that is composed of impact identification, system integration, and responses to achieve a win-win situation in telecoupled human–land systems. The framework can help to create a sustainable future for telecoupled human–land systems.

Settlement changes after peak population: Land system projections for China until 2050

China has experienced unprecedented urbanization in the past few decades, fueled by population growth, economic development, and rural to urban migration. In the future, economic growth as well as rural to urban migration is expected to continue, but demographic scenarios indicate that the population of China will peak and subsequently decline. As a result, it is unsure how urban areas will develop after peak population. In this study we further develop the CLUMondo land system model to simulate land system changes in China until 2050. Our application represents a range of settlement systems, from dense urban areas to village landscapes, differing in their built-up area as well as their population density to enable the simulation of different settlement change trajectories. Our results show that a UN high population scenario in combination with a continued decline in population density leads to an increase of built-up land of about 48%. Conversely, the UN low population scenario in combination with a constant population density could be accommodated within the current amount of built-up land in China. Due to prevailing cropland protection policies, increase in built-up land will mostly lead to a loss of natural areas, hence our scenarios highlight the opportunity space for limiting land take and saving natural areas. This study also demonstrates the need for more nuanced representation of settlement systems for the assessment of land change trajectories.

Patterns of land system change in a Southeast Asian biodiversity hotspot

Growing demand for agricultural commodities like rubber or oil palm is causing rapid change in Southeast Asia's biodiversity-rich forested landscapes. This change is particularly pronounced in Myanmar, whose economy is developing at great speed after the end of decades-long economic and political isolation and armed conflicts. Interventions are needed to ensure that development is sustainable. Designing successful interventions requires spatially explicit knowledge of recent landscape changes. To provide such knowledge, we applied a landscape mosaic approach and analysed land system change in Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar between 2002 and 2016. Our findings show that nearly half of the study region experienced degradation of the vegetation cover, intensification of agricultural use, or a combination of both. Although intact forest was still the prevailing vegetation cover of land systems in Tanintharyi Region in 2016, it had suffered from degradation in wide parts of the region. Land systems without or with only extensive agricultural use in 2002 had become dominated by smallholders' shifting cultivation systems and permanent betel nut gardens and paddy rice fields by 2016. Elsewhere, smallholder dominated land systems were intensified through the expansion of oil palm and rubber plantations, pointing to potential displacement effects. The land system maps offer a sound basis for planning interventions to slow the degradation of biodiversity-rich forests and support smallholder farmers in coping with the fast-paced expansion of commercial cash crop plantations and its social and environmental impacts. Sustainable development in this global biodiversity hotspot requires careful land use planning to support nature and people, along with continued efforts for peace-building.

The role of soil in defining planetary boundaries and the safe operating space for humanity

We use soils to provide 98.8% of our food, but we must ensure that the pressure we place on soils to provide this food in the short-term does not inadvertently push the Earth into a less hospitable state in the long-term. Using the planetary boundaries framework, we show that soils are a master variable for regulating critical Earth-system processes. Indeed, of the seven Earth-systems that have been quantified, soils play a critical and substantial role in changing the Earth-systems in at least two, either directly or indirectly, as well as smaller contributions for a further three. For the biogeochemical flows Earth-system process, soils contribute 66% of the total anthropogenic change for nitrogen and 38% for phosphorus, whilst for the land-system change Earth-system process, soils indirectly contribute 80% of global anthropogenic change. Furthermore, perturbations of soils contribute directly to 21% of climate change, 25% to ocean acidification, and 25% to stratospheric ozone depletion. We argue that urgent interventions are required to greatly improve soil management, especially for those Earth-system processes where the planetary boundary has already been exceeded and where soils make an important contribution, with this being for biogeochemical flows (both nitrogen and phosphorus), for climate change, and for land-system change. Of particular importance, it is noted that the highly inefficient use of N fertilizers results in release of excess N into the broader environment, contributes to climate change, and results in release of ozone-depleting substances. Furthermore, the use of soils for agricultural production results not only in land-system change, but also in the loss (mineralization) of organic matter with a concomitant release of CO2 contributing to both climate change and ocean acidification. Thus, there is a need to markedly improve the efficiency of fertilizer applications and to intensify usage of our most fertile soils in order to allow the restoration of degraded soils and limit further areal expansion of agriculture. Understanding, and acting upon, the role of soils is critical in ensuring that planetary boundaries are not transgressed, with no other single variable playing such a strategic role across all of the planetary boundaries.

National-level consumption-based and production-based utilisation of the land-system change planetary boundary: patterns and trends

To achieve responsible consumption and production under UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, national agri-food consumption and production need to be assessed against environmental limits. We downscaled the land-system change planetary boundary and allocated national-scale cropland environmental limits for agri-food consumption via fair-share allocation based on population, and for agri-food production via biophysical allocation based on available arable land. We assessed country-level utilisation of the land-system change planetary boundary via quantifying national cropland footprints (including imports/exports) using an environmentally extended multi-regional input–output model. Consumption-based footprints were assessed against fair-share cropland limits and production-based footprints were assessed against biophysical cropland limits. Most countries’ agri-food consumption footprints exceeded their fair-share cropland limit while production utilisation of biophysical limits was less pronounced. Conversely, China and India’s cropland consumption footprints were safely within their fair-share environmental limits (utilisation percentages of 80% and 74%, respectively), while their cropland production footprints exceeded biophysical limits (utilisation percentages of 132% and 165%, respectively). Assessing country-level utilisation of the environmental limit for cropland can provide a basis for countries to act as individual entities, or collectively, to develop policies that mitigate their global cropland demand and minimise the risks associated with the exceedance of the land-system change planetary boundary.

Institutional shifts and landscape change: the impact of the Período Especial on Cuba’s land system architecture

ABSTRACT Formal institutions, especially policies, play a key role in land system change. Compared to other drivers of change, however, the impact of policies on landscapes is under-addressed in land system science, in part due to difficulties isolating their effect on longitudinal land change. We address this gap by examining land system architecture changes in Cuba brought about by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting economic crisis: El Período Especial (‘Special Period’). Employing a satellite imagery time-series alongside a review of policy documents, we identify statistically significant land system changes linked to the era’s institutional shifts. We find that concentrated policy efforts to transform agriculture and protect forests corresponded to considerable changes for agriculture but minimal changes to forests. Some changes resulting from the institutional shifts of the Período Especial became visible in the landscape as soon as a few years, while others took decades to manifest.

Identifying lithogenic and anthropogenic factors responsible for spatio-seasonal patterns and quality evaluation of snow melt waters of the River Jhelum Basin in Kashmir Himalaya

The characterization and evaluation of water quality in the Jhelum River Basin is indispensable due to its immense significance in supporting the livelihoods of people and various ecosystem services. Anthropogenic pressures, however, in the form of forest degradation, reckless use of fertilizers and pesticides, land system changes and unplanned settlements are diminishing pristine basin water quality, which necessitates better understanding of pollution variability and its sources. Extensive field sampling across major tributaries and along main river course was carried out during the year 2017–18. Pattern recognition techniques like Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA), Wilk’s λ quotient, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were applied to a huge dataset comprising of 5192 observations. Spatially, three clusters correspond to low pollution headwater streams (cluster 1), moderately polluted middle and downstream sites (cluster 2) and high polluted main river course sites (cluster 3). This is also supported by ANOVA results, manifesting significantly higher concentrations of total hardness (TH), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), chloride (Cl), total alkalinity (TA), nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N), total phosphorus (TP), iron (Fe) and total coliform (TC) in high pollution associated cluster (cluster 3) followed by cluster 2 and minimum quantities were observed in cluster 1. Observations on seasonal water quality either did not fluctuate considerably or differs significantly during summers only, except water temperature (WT), which exhibits significant difference in all seasonal clusters. Wilk’s λ quotient distribution revealed that only WT was main contributor in the formation of seasonal clusters. PCA recognized five underlying factors in the data structure and explained about 72% of total variance. Maximum variance (22.66%) is explained by combination of ionic salt group (natural source) and TC (anthropogenic source) followed by dissolved ions (19.20%) causing hardness and buffering of waters, nutrient sources (15.08%) from human and agriculture wastes, gradient factor (7.87%) allied with small fall in dissolved oxygen (DO) downwards and pH (7.11%) linked with hydrolysis of acidic material accrued from organic matter. The water quality index (WQI) was mostly influenced by coliform bacterial count and pH with highest mean effective weights of 39.15% and 26.65% respectively. Evaluation of the water suitability for drinking purpose reveals that the Jhelum River Basin has mostly retained excellent water quality (66% of data points) but poses safety concerns in downstream segments due to anthropogenic signatures.

Environmental Outcomes of Urban Land System Change: Comparing Riparian Design Approaches in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area

In the face of climate change and other environmental challenges, an increasing number of cities are turning to land design to enhance urban sustainability. Land system architecture (LSA)—which examines the role of size, shape, distribution, and connectivity of land units in relation to the system’s social-environmental dynamics—can be a useful perspective for examining how land contributes to the social and environmental aspects of urban sustainability. There are two gaps, however, that prevent LSA from fully contributing to urban sustainability dialogues. First, it is not well understood how urban design goals, as expressed by urban planners and other practitioners, relate to LSA and environmental outcomes. Second, most LSA work focuses on individual environmental outcomes, such as the urban heat island effect, instead of considering the broader suite of outcomes that LSA changes impact. Here, we undertake an integrated assessment of LSA impacts on surface urban heat island (based on land surface temperature), vegetation presence/health (based on NDVI), and bird biota at two riparian sites with different design intentions in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. The Rio Salado in Tempe underwent a city-led, infill redevelopment that mixed economic, recreational, and flood control design goals. The New River in Peoria experienced a more typical developer-driven urbanization. The contexts and design goals of the sites generated differences in their LSA, but only a few of these differences were sufficiently unique to contribute to divergent environmental outcomes. These differences reside in (1) the greater distribution of recreational land-covers and (2) increased surface water at the Rio Salado site compared to the New River site. Both changes are linked to land-cover patches becoming greener and cooler as well as a greater presence of waterbird and warbler species at the Rio Salado site. The distinctions between the sites provide insight for crafting design goals for redeveloping or restoring urban riparian landscapes in the Phoenix metropolitan area that are grounded in LSA. With the incorporation of additional relevant variables, especially socioeconomic ones, the research approach employed in this study provides a foundation for the assessment of other urban land system change.

Regional landscape futures to moderate projected climate change: a case study in the agro-pastoral transitional zone of North China

Changes in land systems have been shown to affect regional climate, but minimal attention has been paid to landscape patterns as adaptation strategies to climate change. In this study, we introduce alternative futures analysis and coupled land-atmosphere modeling to investigate the effect of landscape patterns on moderating projected climate change in northern China. Three future landscape scenarios are developed, and their impacts on regional climate in the context of climate change are examined. A reference scenario, Business-as-Usual, follows recent landscape trajectory; the Conservation scenario puts greater emphasis on ecosystem protection and restoration to ultimately achieve sustained socioeconomic development; the Degradation scenario ignores current policy to allow broad cropland expansion. The landscape impacts on regional climate under two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) are substantial and dependent on background climate. The Conservation scenario shows considerable decreases in near-surface temperature and extensive increases in rainfall during summer as compared with Business-as-Usual under RCP8.5 (i.e., a high emissions scenario), thus representing a preferred landscape pattern for climate moderation. However, trade-offs between temperature reduction and rainfall enhancement exist under RCP4.5 (i.e., a low-to-moderate emissions scenario), which necessitates careful evaluation. Finally, the Degradation scenario leads to the highest temperature and lowest rainfall among the three alternative futures under both climate conditions. Our study underlines the importance of landscape design/planning as an effective way to moderate climate change, and provides useful scientific information for making land use policies.

The Montado/Dehesa Cow-Calf Production Systems in Portugal and Spain: An Economic and Resources’ Use Approach

The Montado in Portugal and Dehesa in Spain is a unique agro-silvo-pastoral system designed to overcome food needs in a scarce resource’s environment. The system competitiveness is not clear and it is now under severe threats, caused by extensification or abandonment of less fertile areas and by intensification in more fertile ones. The aim of the undertaken research is to compare the cow-calf production within these systems in Portugal and Spain, identifying their strengths and weaknesses and the main drivers of their evolution, and to compare these systems with other European countries’ systems, ranking their competitiveness and efficiency among other systems in the EU. The research indicates that Montado/Dehesa farms systems are dependent on the type of farming system, its context and management, i.e., on the decision and its context; so, in a context of Mediterranean land system changes, the future of the Montado/Dehesa ecosystem depends on the ability of the cow-calf production systems to face the future and to perceive the modifications needed to overcome new challenges and take advantage of new opportunities.

Linking the Recent Glacier Retreat and Depleting Streamflow Patterns with Land System Changes in Kashmir Himalaya, India

This study reports the changes in glacier extent and streamflow similar to many Himalayan studies, but takes the unusual step of also linking these to downstream land use changes in Kashmir Valley. This study assessed changes in the area, snout, and equilibrium line altitude (ELA) of four parts of the Kolahoi Glacier using earth observation data from 1962 to 2018. Changes in the discharge of the two streams flowing out from Kolahoi Glacier into the Jhelum basin were also assessed between 1972 and 2018. Additionally, satellite data was used to track the downstream land system changes concerning agriculture, orchards, and built-up areas between 1980 and 2018. This analysis suggested a cumulative deglaciation of 23.6% at a rate of 0.42% per year from 1962 to 2018. The snout of two larger glaciers, G1 and G2, retreated at a rate of 18.3 m a−1 and 16.4 m a−1, respectively, from 1962 to 2018, although the rate of recession accelerated after 2000. Our analysis also suggested the upward shift of ELA by ≈120 m. The streamflows measured at five sites showed statistically significant depleting trends that have been a factor in forcing extensive land system changes downstream. Although the area under agriculture in Lidder watershed shrunk by 39%, there was a massive expansion of 176% and 476% in orchards and built-up areas, respectively, from 1980 to 2018. The conversion of irrigation-intensive agriculture lands (rice paddy) to less water-intensive orchards is attributed to economic considerations and depleting streamflow.

The glacial landsystem of Fjallsjökull, Iceland: Spatial and temporal evolution of process-form regimes at an active temperate glacier

This study assesses the spatial and temporal evolution of the glacial landsystem signature at Fjallsjökull, southeast Iceland, using (a) mapping of the glacial geomorphology and surficial geology and (b) repeat uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) surveys. A small-scale (1: 15,000 scale) landsystem map has been compiled using LiDAR data (2011−2012) and historical aerial photographs (1945–1998), along with a large-scale (1: 2000 scale) map based on UAV imagery from May 2019. From our mapping and UAV surveys, we identify sediment-landform assemblages that are typical of active temperate glacial landsystems, including recessional push/squeeze moraines and intervening flutings, overridden moraine arcs, proglacial outwash (sandur) fans and linear/ribbon sandar. We recognize three landform zones that are defined by changes in moraine morphology and the nature of proglacial outwash deposition: (1) the outer foreland is characterized by proglacial outwash fans, overridden moraine arcs and broadly linear recessional moraines; (2) the middle foreland contains sawtooth moraines and linear sandar; and (3) the innermost zone comprises extremely sawtooth and hairpin moraines as well as associated crevasse-squeeze ridge limbs. This landform zonation reflects spatio-temporal changes in moraine-forming processes and outwash deposition as determined by changes in snout morphology and proglacial drainage characteristics. Within this general tripartite zonation, we also identify localized (azonal/intrazonal) sediment-landform assemblages that are not typically found at active temperate glaciers, including ice-cored/hummocky terrain and localized kame and kettle topography. Repeat UAV surveying in 2016–2019 has allowed us to capture and quantify recent intrazonal landsystem change at the southern glacier margin. We identify a switch from moraine formation to the development of ice-cored terrain and an ice-cored esker complex in association with the uncovering of a depositional overdeepening. Our study demonstrates the important role that variations in local boundary conditions (e.g. topography) can play in the process-form response of individual active temperate outlet glaciers, contributing to the expanding database on modern glacial landsystems.

Planetary boundary downscaling for absolute environmental sustainability assessment — Case study of Taiwan

• The PB concept has been applied in assessing AES in local level. • The current national data can be easily connected with PB concept. • Downscaled PBs by territorial perspective can be the local targets for AES. • Dynamic concept was introduced for enhancing normalization and weighting. The planetary boundary (PB) concept can be used as a guide for the absolute environmental sustainability (AES) of humanity. However, the downscaling of PB as a guide remains a challenge at the local scale. This study aims to establish absolute environmentally sustainable indicators (AESIs) and a threshold based on five processes of the Earth system, namely, climate change, ocean acidification, biogeochemical flow (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles), land system change, and freshwater use, for local AES assessment. A case study of Taiwan was conducted. This work also introduced the dynamic concept into developing dynamic normalization factors (DNFs) and dynamic weighting factors (DWFs) for AESIs to support decision-making. DNFs were defined as desired targets in the future; they were developed on the basis of the thresholds of AESIs at the global and national levels in a different timeline. DWFs were defined as weights for assessing the distance of a current situation from the desired targets; they were evaluated on the basis of the distance-to-target approach. The territorial perspective was adopted as a downscaling method to develop 11 AESIs and thresholds based on the PB framework for the AES assessment of Taiwan. Results showed that the nationally determined contribution target of the carbon pathway is not ambitious compared with the annual and cumulative boundaries of climate change and ocean acidification. Phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers are two of the three subcategories in biogeochemical flow with very high risks. Phosphorus flow from a freshwater system to the oceans and forest cover was evaluated as moderate risk. Meanwhile, annual freshwater use was determined as low risk. However, when spatial and temporal factors were considered, annual freshwater use was assessed as high risk during the dry season in Southern and Central Taiwan. DNFs and DWFs are more suitable at the local level than at the global level when applying normalization and weighting to reflect a real situation. This study not only provided a new concept for local policy makers to rethink environmental sustainability, but also explored various AES tools at the local scale to connect the local situation with global issues to support decision-making.

A holistic approach to land system dynamics – The Monfurado case in Alentejo, Portugal

Understanding land system dynamics is fundamental for policy-making from local to global scale. Land system is a combination of land use, land management and territorial practices. To attain such complete information about landscape structures is a challenging task. Aiming to deepen knowledge on land systems, we applied a methodology meant to achieve a broader understanding of dynamics in the Sítio de Monfurado (SM), a Natura 2000 site and holder of High Nature Value farming systems. To do so, we combined spatial analysis of land system changes with a participatory approach designated as Territory Game. While the spatial analysis shows little change in the SM land systems, the territory is perceived as fast-changing by the territorial actors (e.g., stakeholders with an explicit role in territorial development). At both scales, and in agreement with literature, we find trends of simplification and intensification in land systems, typically associated with the reduction of multifunctionality. The combination of both approaches contributed to the understanding of past changes, the drivers that induce such changes, how these are interpreted and, how to act upon them in the future. The proposed combined methodology can bring new useful insights for policy-makers, although scaling from local to broader scale remains a challenge.

Feeding ten billion people is possible within four terrestrial planetary boundaries

Global agriculture puts heavy pressure on planetary boundaries, posing the challenge to achieve future food security without compromising Earth system resilience. On the basis of process-detailed, spatially explicit representation of four interlinked planetary boundaries (biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater use, nitrogen flows) and agricultural systems in an internally consistent model framework, we here show that almost half of current global food production depends on planetary boundary transgressions. Hotspot regions, mainly in Asia, even face simultaneous transgression of multiple underlying local boundaries. If these boundaries were strictly respected, the present food system could provide a balanced diet (2,355 kcal per capita per day) for 3.4 billion people only. However, as we also demonstrate, transformation towards more sustainable production and consumption patterns could support 10.2 billion people within the planetary boundaries analysed. Key prerequisites are spatially redistributed cropland, improved water–nutrient management, food waste reduction and dietary changes. Agriculture transforms the Earth and risks crossing thresholds for a healthy planet. This study finds almost half of current food production crosses such boundaries, as for freshwater use, but that transformation towards more sustainable production and consumption could support 10.2 billion people.

Nowe podejście do systemowych zmian na lądzie na pograniczu: przypadek pogranicza Chin i innych krajów azjatyckich

This study contributes to the literature on how to explicitly describe, track, and interpret the structure and dynamics of land systems in borderlands. The shift in land system science analytics from place-based toward larger-scale analysis of interactions and connections in a globalized context provides an opportunity to synthesize the knowledge about borderlands. This paper argues that studies on land system changes in borderlands need to thoroughly link the features of borderland regions with multiple interactions – on either or both sides of a border – rather than simply focusing on shifts within closed national boundaries. Furthermore, this paper provides important insights that can advance existing approaches to track and interpret changes in the land systems of borderlands.

Generated land systems: recognition and prospects of land system science

Although land system research has made important progress in land change monitoring, long-term histories of land use change, land system change modeling, and case-study synthesis, it still faces some challenges in system integration and comprehensive analysis. To better understand and explore the comprehensiveness of land systems, system integration theory should be combined with system generation theory that emphasizes historical accumulation. Therefore, this paper revisits some of the basic connotations and theories of land system science by reviewing relevant research and proposes the concept of generated land systems based on system generation theory with an aim to providing a reference base for future research. As coupled human–environment systems are generated by mankind’s transformation, utilization, and adaptation of the land surface and its upper and lower spaces of Earth, generated land systems evolve in the mutual generation and restriction of the biophysical environment, land use, and social economy. The evolution forms of generated land systems can be classified as fluctuation, degradation, and optimization based on the ascendency and resilience of the system. The need for generated land systems to be multi-functional is what motivates the direction and form of generated land system evolution. Generation mechanism, process, adaptability, scale effect, and tele-coupling are important issues of generated land system research. In addition, how generated land systems can enter a new evolutionary cycle through functional transformation is also crucial to achieving sustainable management and utilization of land resources.