Human driven changes to the land surface have wide ranging influence on
the functioning of the Earth System. The intensity of land cover change
has increased rapidly over the last three hundred years, driven by
population growth and increasing living standards. Expansion of
agriculture and deforestation has significantly altered the
environment. Recent development in land cover data sources enables us
to obtain a reasonable overview of the global changes in land cover.
Much less, however, is known about change in land use practices and
agricultural and forest management that impact ecological services. In
this lecture Professor Reenberg outlines the complexity of causes,
processes and impacts of land change and call for a comprehensive
framework to understand the human decisions that drive the global
changes.
