Dear Colleague,

A few weeks back, GLP and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) convened “Mind the Gap! National climate pledges overstep on available land”, beginning a series of joint webinars aimed at generating conversations around what a more realistic role for land in global climate mitigation could be. We look forward to continuing these conversations with you and hope you will reach out if you’d like to share your ideas on what we should cover in future events. 

The call for nominations to our Scientific Steering Committee remains open until April 1st. If you have questions about joining the SSC or the nomination process, please reach out to any member of the SSC or to me at the IPO.

Enjoy the news & wishing a fruitful equinox to all!
Ariane and the IPO team

A new paper in Landscape Ecology examines how studying the Covid-19 pandemic's severe impacts on land users and landscapes around the world allow a better understanding of how global shocks, cascading disruptions, and reconnections influence contemporary land systems. This perspective article emerged from a series of webinars and online discussions held by multiple GLP Working Groups during the latter half of 2021.

Members of the joint GLP/AIMES Behavioural Models of Land Systems Working Group invite submissions for a session of the 2023 European Conference on Ecological Modelling that deals with the conceptualisation and modelling of social-ecological interactions, strategies for overcoming lack of data or knowledge including through innovative collection methods, and the use of models to support sustainability transformations. Deadline: 1 April 2023

The current and previous coordinators of the joint GLP/AIMES Behavioural Models of Land Systems Working Group recently contributed a piece to the new AIMES Bulletin that outlines the group's work to support efforts to develop behavioural models of human activity within land systems and to couple them with other models through improved understanding of the processes underlying human-environment interactions.

On 21 February 2023, three authors of The Land Gap Report joined the GLP and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) to share their findings that countries’ climate pledges rely on unrealistic amounts of land-based carbon removal. The Land Gap Report, published in 2022, shows that if one tallies up all the land proposed for offsets in national climate plans, the total needed amounts to 1.2 billion hectares, which is equivalent to the total amount of land that is in cropland today. These offset commitments cannot be achieved without significant negative impacts on livelihoods, land rights, and ecosystems.

The GLP is currently seeking to nominate two to three new SSC members, starting June 2023. The continuing success of GLP relies on the input of these people. In seeking nominations, we are looking for scientific excellence and a high level of commitment to actualizing GLP goals and activities. Deadline: 1 April 2023

The role of harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) products to reveal multiple trajectories and determinants of cropland abandonment in subtropical mountainous areas
A new article in the Journal of Environmental Management took Nanjing County of China as an example and found great suitability of harmonized Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 images to distinguish multiple trajectories of cropland abandonment in subtropical mountainous areas.
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