In this study, a land use/land cover change analysis method was developed to examine patterns of land use/land cover conversions of cropland to urban uses and conversions of rangeland to cropland uses in the United States (US) Midwest region. We used the US 2001 and 2006 National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD) for our spatial analyses of these conversion trends.

In this article, we argue that research on land reform in the nation of Zimbabwe has overlooked possibilities of integrating geospatial methods into analyses and, at the same time, geographers have not adequately developed techniques for this application. Scholars have generally been captured within the debate focused on the success or failure of the Zimbabwean land reform program, and have neglected to analyze what has occurred where during the process of “fast-track land reform”.

Land uses are changing rapidly in Vietnam’s upland northern borderlands. Regional development platforms such as the Greater Mekong Subregion, state-propelled market integration and reforestation programs, and lowland entrepreneurs and migrants are all impacting this frontier landscape. Drawing on a mixed methods approach using remote sensing data from 2000 to 2009 and ethnographic fieldwork, we examine how land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) has occurred across three borderland provinces—Lai Châu, Lào Cai and Hà Giang—with high proportions of ethnic minority semi-subsistence farmers.

We use the hybrid modeling laboratory of the Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics (MedLanD) Project to simulate barranco incision in eastern Spain under different scenarios of natural and human environmental change. We carry out a series of modeling experiments set in the Rio Penaguila valley of northern Alicante Province. The MedLanD Modeling Laboratory (MML) is able to realistically simulate gullying and incision in a multi-dimensional, spatially explicit virtual landscape. We first compare erosion modeled in wooded and denuded landscapes in the absence of human land-use.

Soil loss is not limited to change from forest or woodland to other land uses/covers. It may occur when there is agricultural land-use/cover modification or conversion. Soil loss may influence loss of carbon from the soil, hence implication on greenhouse gas emission. Changing land use could be considered actually or potentially successful in adapting to climate change, or may be considered maladaptation if it creates environmental degradation.

Land cover change impacts ecosystem function across the globe. The use of land cover data is vital in the detection of these changes over time; however, most available land cover products, such as the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), are produced relatively infrequently. The most recent NLCD at the time of this research was produced in 2006 and does not adequately reflect the impact of land cover changes that have occurred since, including the occurrence of two large wildfires in 2008 in our study area.

The National Geomatics Center of China (NGCC) produced Global Land Cover (GlobalLand30) maps with 30 m spatial resolution for the years 2000 and 2009–2010, responding to the need for harmonized, accurate, and high-resolution global land cover data. This study aims to assess the mapping accuracy of the land surface water layer of GlobalLand30 for 2009–2010. A representative Mediterranean region, situated in Greece, is considered as the case study area, with 2009 as the reference year.

The north-eastern escarpment of Madagascar harbours the island’s last remaining large-scale humid forest massifs surrounded by a small-scale agricultural mosaic. There is high deforestation, commonly thought to be caused by shifting cultivation practiced by local land users to produce upland rice. However, little is known about the dynamics between forest and shifting cultivation systems at a regional level.

Many countries in West Asia, defined in this study as the Arabic-speaking countries of the Arabian Peninsula plus Turkey and Iran, have enacted environmental conservation laws but regional underlying drivers of environment change, such as rising incomes and fast-growing populations, continue to put pressure on remaining wetlands. This paper aims to inform conservation efforts by presenting the first regional assessment of the economic value of coastal and freshwater wetlands in West Asia.

A landscape perspective is generally recognized as essential for conservation biology. The main underlying reason is that species respond to features of the landscape at various spatial scales, for example habitat area, connectivity, and matrix habitats. However, there is also an “historical” component of a landscape perspective, which has not received similar attention. The underlying reasons for historical effects are that humans have influenced landscapes during several millennia and that species and communities may respond slowly to land use change.

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) has been experiencing significant forest depletion since the 1980s, but there is little evidence to demonstrate the major causes and underlying drivers for the forest cover changes. In this study, we investigated the relationship between forest cover decrease and increase in the south of Lao PDR between 2006 and 2012 and selected physical and socio-economic factors.

Mapping large areas for planning and conservation is a challenge undergoing rapid transformation. For centuries, the creation of broad-extent maps was the near-exclusive domain of expert specialist cartographers, who painstakingly delineated regions of relative homogeneity with respect to a given set of criteria. In the satellite era, it has become possible to rapidly create and update categorizations of Earth’s surface with improved speed and flexibility. Land cover datasets and landscape metrics offer a vast set of information for viewing and quantifying land cover across large areas.