The main goal of this Working Group is to understand better the patterns, underling causes, and implications of land abandonment in the connection to sustainable land use. 

Coordinators: Miroslava Bavorova, Suresh Chaudhary, Simona Gradinaru, Alexander Prishchepov, He Yin

The purpose of this Working Group is to understand the dynamics, structure, functions and services of dryland SES, which is critical for addressing the vulnerability, resilience, livelihoods and sustainability of humans in the context of SDGs.

Coordinators: Bojie Fu, Dennis Ojima, Mark Stafford Smith, and Xiubo Yu

The primary goal of this Working Group is to gather together a critical mass of interested land system scientists to examine the multiple facets of remittance dynamics and change in land systems throughout the world.

Coordinators: Geoff Henebry, Elizabeth Mack

Telecoupling visualizations through a network lens: a systematic review
A new paper in Ecology and Society takes stock of existing telecoupling visualizations and provides recommendations for improving current practices. Read more

A cultivated planet in 2010 – Part 2: The global gridded agricultural-production maps
In this second part of the two-paper series in Earth System Science Data (ESSD), the authors introduce SPAM2010 – the latest global spatially explicit datasets on agricultural production circa 2010 – and elaborate on the improvement of the SPAM (Spatial Production Allocation Model) dataset family since 2000. Read more

Beyond deforestation monitoring in conservation hotspots: Analysing landscape mosaic dynamics in north-eastern Madagascar
This article in Applied Geography adopts a landscape mosaic approach to assess the changes between natural forests, shifting cultivation and permanent cultivation systems at the regional level from 1995 to 2011. Read more

Maldevelopment revisited: Inclusiveness and social impacts of soy expansion over Brazil’s Cerrado in Matopiba
In this paper in World Development the authors revisit and conceptualize the notion of maldevelopment, here defined as inequitable and exclusive processes of change that deprive most local stakeholders of their social and material capabilities. Using an inclusiveness framework, they then conduct an in-depth analysis of soy expansion in the Matopiba region of Brazil’s Cerrado. Read more

Participatory analysis of sustainable land and water management practices for integrated rural development in Myanmar
The authors of this new study in the Journal of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene for Development used an expert participatory process to identify suitable Sustainable Land and Water Management practices in Myanmar, which can inform future development projects in rural the country. Read more

Assessing land use changes and livelihood outcomes of rural people in Bangladesh
This paper in Land Degradation & Development examines land use patterns of rural households and the association with food production and income across three different zones of various forest proximity across a landscape gradient (remote, intermediate and on‐road) in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of Bangladesh. Read more

Linking forest transition, plant invasion and forest succession theories: socioeconomic drivers and composition of new subtropical andean forests
This paper in Landscape Ecology develops a framework integrating forest transition, forest succession and biological invasion theories to identify the socio-environmental conditions that facilitate different pathways of spontaneous forest transitions in a subtropical mountain basin. Read more

Shared Socio-economic Pathways for European agriculture and food systems: The Eur-Agri-SSPs
A new paper in Global Environmental Change followed a nine-step protocol to extend and enrich a set of global scenarios – the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) – providing regional and sectoral detail for European agriculture and food systems using a one-to-one nesting participatory approach. The resulting five Eur-Agri-SSPs describe alternative plausible qualitative evolutions of multiple drivers of particular importance and high uncertainty for European agriculture and food systems. Read more

A protocol to develop Shared Socio-economic Pathways for European agriculture
A new paper in the Journal of Environmental Management presents a protocol to operationalize the development of Shared Socio-economic Pathways for European agriculture – Eur-Agri-SSPs – to support IAAS. The proposed design of the storyline development process is based on six quality criteria: plausibility, vertical and horizontal consistency, salience, legitimacy, richness and creativity. Read more