1 Land a Common Definition of Land Is the Surface of the Earth and All Its

Land

A common definition of land is the surface of the Earth and all its natural resources. This is interpreted to include the atmosphere, the soil and underlying geology, hydrology, and plants on the Earth's surface. (Brinkman and Smyth, 1973)

Fenton, T.E., 2014. Land Capability Classification, In Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group

Land

In the 1938 Yearbook of Agriculture, land is defined as the total natural and cultural environment within which production must take place. Its attributes include climate, surface configuration, soil, water supply, subsurface conditions, etc., together with its location with respect to centers of commerce and population. (USDA, 1938)

Fenton, T.E., 2014. Land Capability Classification, In Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, Wang, Y. (Ed), CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group

1 Land

Other definitions included the results of the past and present human activities as well as the animals within this area when they exert a significant influence on the present and future uses of land by man.

Fenton, T.E., 2014. Land Capability Classification, In Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, Wang, Y. (Ed), CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group

Impacts?

1. Human activities altered the landscape, as well as the land, air, water resources and biodiversity; 2. The energy exchange and movement of materials of the Earth system presented as natural disasters to human society.

2 The Anthropocene? For the past three centuries, the effects of humans on the global environment have escalated. Because of these anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, global climate may depart significantly from natural behavior for many millennia to come.

The Anthropocene could be said to have started in the late eighteenth century, when analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. Crutzen, 2002

This epoch may be defined to have started about two centuries ago, coinciding with James Watt’s design of the steam engine in 1784.” The Anthropocene: Crutzen, 2006 Nature, 2002

Land Use and Land Cover Change

• Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) is an integral component of global environmental change. • There is a large body of both theoretically and empirically grounded work on LULCC that falls under the umbrella of the relatively new discipline of land- change science. • The biophysical processes and human activities interact in changing land-use and land-cover. The critical aspects underlying much of these recent debates on LULCC are further separation of landscapes of consumption and production, and the ultimate scarcity of land.

Güneralp, B., 2014. Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC), In Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, Wang, Y. (Ed), CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group

3 "I do not see how anyone can claim to be informed about what is probably humanity's single most important problem without having read Ultimate Security." Robert Heilbroner

“The book presents the dilemma that is sure to dominate the next century.”

(Myers, 1993)

4 Land Change Science

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), or more simply land change, is an integral component and has emerged as a fundamental component of global environmental change and sustainability research.

This interdisciplinary field seeks to understand the dynamics of land cover and land use as a coupled human-environment system to address theory, concepts, models, and applications relevant to environmental and societal problems, including the intersection of the two.

Turner, B.L., II; Lambin, E.F.; Reenberg, A. Land Change Science Special Feature: The emergence of land change science for global environmental change and sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2007, 104 (52), 20666-20671.

Land Change Science

This research community seeks to improve: 1. observation and monitoring of land changes underway throughout the world 2. understanding of these changes as a coupled human - environment system 3. spatially explicit modeling of land change 4. assessments of system outcomes, such as vulnerability, resilience, or sustainability.

5 Turner, B.L., II; Lambin, E.F.; Reenberg, A. Land Change Science Special Feature: The emergence of land change science for global environmental change and sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2007, 104 (52), 20666-20671.

Land Change Science

LULCC is important for biogeochemical cycles such as nutrient cycling, for biodiversity through its impacts on habitats, and for climate by changing sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and land surface. LULCC also has important implications for the provision of ecosystem services on which both rural and urban societies depend.

• Fraterrigo, J.M.; Turner, M.G.; Pearson, S.M.; Dixon, P. Effects of past land use on spatial heterogeneity of soil nutrients in southern appalachian forests. Ecological Monographs 2005, 75 (2), 215-230. • Verchot, L.V.; Davidson, E.A.; Cattânio, J.H.; Ackerman, I.L.; Erickson, H.E.; Keller, M. Land use change and biogeochemical controls of nitrogen oxide emissions from soils in eastern Amazonia. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 1999, 13 (1), 31-46. • Dupouey, J.L.; Dambrine, E.; Laffite, J.D.; Moares, C. Irreversible impact of past land use on forest soils and biodiversity. Ecology 2002, 83 (11), 2978-2984. • Harding, J.S.; Benfield, E.F.; Bolstad, P.V.; Helfman, G.S.; Jones Iii, E.B.D. Stream biodiversity: The ghost of land use past. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 1998, 95 (25), 14843-14847. • Pielke Sr, R.A.; Marland, G.; Betts, R.A.; Chase, T.N.; Eastman, J.L.; Niles, J.O.; Niyogi, D.D.S.; Running, S.W. The influence of land-use change and landscape dynamics on the climate system: Relevance to climate-change policy beyond the radiative effect of greenhouse gases. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 2002, 360 (1797), 1705-1719. • Houghton, R.A. Revised estimates of the annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land management 1850-2000. Tellus, Series B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology 2003, 55 (2), 378-390. • Naidoo, R.; Balmford, A.; Costanza, R.; Fisher, B.; Green, R.E.; Lehner, B.; Malcolm, T.R.; Ricketts, T.H. Global mapping of ecosystem services and conservation priorities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2008, 105 (28), 9495-9500.

6 Land Use and Land Cover Change

Several international science efforts such as the Global Land Project, a joint research project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme, are devoted to issues revolving around LULCC in recognition of the pivotal role it plays in the functioning of the Earth system.

Global Land Project. GLP Science Plan and Implementation Strategy, 2005, IGBP Secretariat: Stockholm. 64.

LULCC: Causes and Consequences

While biophysical processes and predominant climatic conditions broadly determine the land cover in a particular location, human activities play a key role in creating the observed land cover and land use patterns and may even create land uses that could not be supported by the climatic conditions at that locale (e.g., irrigated agriculture in extremely arid environments).

7 LULCC: Causes and Consequences

Within the webs of interactions, one way to explain land change is to refer to proximate and underlying causes.

• Proximate (or direct) causes are those human activities and immediate actions that originate from the intended manipulation of land cover. • Underlying (or indirect) causes are fundamental processes that compel the more proximate processes.

• Geist, H.J.; Lambin, E.F. What drives tropical deforestation?: A meta-analysis of proximate and underlying causes of deforestation based on subnational case study evidence, in LUCC Report Series2001, LUCC International Project Office, University of Louvain: Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. 116. • Ojima, D.S.; Galvin, K.A.; Turner II, B.L. The global impact of land-use change. Bioscience 1994, 44 (5), 300-304.

LULCC: Causes and Consequences

Proximate causes are generally limited to activities such as agricultural expansion or infrastructure development whereas underlying causes can consist of, depending on the context of land change, many factors - biophysical, demographic, economic, technological, institutional, and cultural - acting across multiple spatial and temporal scales.

These factors can play varying and often interacting roles in creating the observed land use and land cover patterns on the ground.

8 LULCC: Causes and Consequences

About 75% of the ice-free surface of the Earth has undergone noticeable land change due to human activities. (Ellis and Ramankutty, 2008)

Another suggests that, between 1700 and 2000, 42-68% of the global land surface was impacted by various land- use activities.

Ellis, E.C.; Ramankutty, N. Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2008, 6 (8), 439-447.

9 Anthropogenic biomes are best characterized as heterogeneous landscape mosaics, combining a variety of different land uses and land covers.

Urban areas are embedded within agricultural areas, trees are interspersed with croplands and housing, and managed vegetation is mixed with semi-natural vegetation (e.g., croplands are embedded within rangelands and forests).

The hypothesis was that even in the most densely populated biomes, most landscape heterogeneity is caused by natural variation in terrain, hydrology, soils, disturbance regimes, and climate, as described by conventional models of ecosystems and the terrestrial biosphere.

Ellis, E.C.; Ramankutty, N. Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2008, 6 (8), 439-447.

10 Evidence suggests that tropical forests in Central and South America had witnessed periodic and localized deforestation with the rise and fall of many civilizations (Heckenberger et al., 2008; McNeil et al., 2010).

Across much of the world, deforestation rates increased with the onset of colonization and especially after the onset of the Industrial revolution.

• Heckenberger, M.J.; Russell, J.C.; Fausto, C.; Toney, J.R.; Schmidt, M.J.; Pereira, E.; Franchetto, B.; Kuikuro, A. Pre- Columbian Urbanism, Anthropogenic Landscapes, and the Future of the Amazon. Science 2008, 321 (5893), 1214-1217. • McNeil, C.L.; Burney, D.A.; Burney, L.P. Evidence disputing deforestation as the cause for the collapse of the ancient Maya polity of Copan, Honduras. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2010, 107 (3), 1017-1022.

11 Since the late 19th to early 20th centuries, there has been a trend of reforestation in many of the previously deforested lands of Europe and New England (Lambin and Meyfroidy, 2011).

These reforestation and afforestation dynamics are linked in complicated ways to the ongoing deforestation in much of the tropical belt as well as boreal forests in Asia (Meyfroidt and Lambin; Mayer et al., 2005).

• Lambin, E.F.; Meyfroidt, P. Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2011, 108 (9), 3465-3472. • Meyfroidt, P.; Lambin, E.F. Forest transition in Vietnam and displacement of deforestation abroad. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2009, 106 (38), 16139-16144. • Mayer, A.L.; Kauppi, P.E.; Angelstam, P.K.; Zhang, Y.; Tikka, P.M. Importing timber, exporting ecological impact. Science 2005, 308 (5720), 359-360.

Increasing domestic forest protection without simultaneously decreasing demand for wood necessitates an increase in foreign imports, introducing a negative impact on forest biodiversity elsewhere.

On an international scale, a net gain in forest protection is questionable if local protection shifts logging pressure to natural forests in less privileged areas of the world.

This is especially problematic as conservation area networks usually function better in landscapes with a shorter land-use history.

Mayer, A.L.; Kauppi, P.E.; Angelstam, P.K.; Zhang, Y.; Tikka, P.M. Importing timber, exporting ecological impact. Science 2005, 308 (5720), 359-360.

12 During the past 300 years, large areas of grasslands have been converted to croplands in North America and Eurasia (Ramankutty and Foley, 1999).

By one estimate, half of the total land converted to croplands since 1700 has been savanna-like vegetation (Goldewijk, 2001).

Ramankutty, N.; Foley, J.A. Estimating historical changes in global land cover: Croplands from Global historical cropland areas from 1700 to 1992; rate 1700 to 1992. Global Biogeochemical Cycles of change of cropland areas calculated over various time 1999, 13 (4), 997-1027. intervals during the 1700-1992 time period.

Urban areas cover less than 3% of the ice-free land surface yet are home to more than half the total human population.

In addition to the direct impacts of urbanization such as expansion of urban land, urbanization in a particular location may also influence land change elsewhere indirectly through demands for natural resources such as sand, gravel, and timber for both construction as well as demand for food (DeFries et al., 2010; Seto et al., 2012).

• DeFries, R.S.; Rudel, T.; Uriarte, M.; Hansen, M. Deforestation driven by urban population growth and agricultural trade in the twenty-first century. Nature Geoscience 2010, 3 (3), 178-181. • Seto, K.C.; Reenberg, A.; Boone, C.G.; Fragkias, M.; Haase, D.; Langanke, T.; Marcotullio, P.; Munroe, D.K.; Olah, B.; Simon, D. Urban land teleconnections and sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2012.

13 Place-Based Definitions Urban land teleconnections & sustainability In land change science, urbanization and land are predominantly described as a place or as bounded geographical areas. This contrasts with other literatures that argue that places have multiple identities and are networked through social processes.

Placed-based conceptualizations of land use assume sharp and distinguishable boundaries between urban and nonurban. They do not permit multiple classifications of the same physical space. Moreover, place- based conceptualizations assume spatial units as fixed containers of uniform characteristics

Seto, K.C.; Reenberg, A.; Boone, C.G.; Fragkias, M.; Haase, D.; Langanke, T.; Marcotullio, P.; Munroe, D.K.; Olah, B.; Simon, D. Urban land teleconnections and sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2012.

Urban Land Teleconnections is a process-based conceptualization that intertwines land use and urbanization by linking places through their processes. It answers a need to improve on classical theories by capturing changes in nonurban places that affect urban places, and vice versa.

The economic complexities and dynamic interrelations among local, regional, and global processes and commodity flows mean that transboundary and nonlocal impacts on land from urbanization can occur in multiple and distant locations.

14 Theoretical Foundations

While there is no overarching theory of land change, there have been many theories put forward to explain land change dynamics.

Land change models, informed by the theoretical body on land change processes, are essential in evaluating various scenarios of societal and biophysical changes in terms of land change outcomes.

Güneralp, B., 2014. Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC), In Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, Wang, Y. (Ed), CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group

Theoretical Foundations

Theories of land change collectively take a broad range of phenomena as their foci, e.g., complexity and resilience concepts, behavioral approaches based on economic theoretical frameworks, globalization, and institutions.

An overarching theory of land change will most likely bring together many aspects of these theories. Such a grand theory needs to be dynamic meaning that it should explain land changes that occurred in the past as well as those that are being experienced in the present.

• Manson, S.M. Challenges in evaluating models of geographic complexity. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 2007, 34 (2), 245-260. • Irwin, E.G.; Geoghegan, J. Theory, data, methods: Developing spatially explicit economic models of land use change. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 2001, 85 (1-3), 7-23. • Hecht, S. The new rurality: Globalization, peasants and the paradoxes of landscapes. Land Use Policy 2010, 27 (2), 161-169. • Young, O.R.; Lambin, E.F.; Alcock, F.; Haberl, H.; Karlsson, S.I.; McConnell, W.J.; Myint, T.; Pahl-Wostl, C.; Polsky, C.; Ramakrishnan, P.S.; Schroeder, H.; Scouvart, M.; Verburg, P.H. A portfolio approach to analyzing complex human- environment interactions: Institutions and land change. Ecology and Society 2006, 11 (2).

15 Theorizing efforts can also be grouped under those focusing on particular types of land changes such as tropical deforestation, forest transition, desertification, agricultural change, and urban land use change.

The specific theories informing a particular case study is mainly determined by the disciplinary backgrounds of the researchers involved. There are also differences on the theories of land change in the developed vs. developing world reflecting the differences between the two in terms of both the processes in question and the land change outcomes.

None of these theories claim to have an explanatory power across the full spectrum of land change dynamics. However, all bring something to the table that not only illuminates the particular conditions leading to observed land change dynamics but also informs to an extent the land change processes that are in play in other situations and places.

Monitoring and Modeling

Satellite-based observations have transformed monitoring land cover as they provide a consistent way to observe the change in land cover both across space and over time.

Satellite-based monitoring of land change faces a number of limitations. Foremost among these are, depending on the application, challenges in terms of the spatial, temporal, or radiometric resolution, inability to differentiate different land uses, and its availability only for the past few decades.

Because of these limitations, ancillary information such as aerial photography, survey maps, household surveys, census data, and official statistics are still frequently used along with or instead of satellite-based data.

• Goward, S.N.; Davis, P.E.; Fleming, D.; Miller, L.; Townshend, J.R. Empirical comparison of Landsat 7 and IKONOS multispectral measurements for selected Earth Observation System (EOS) validation sites. Remote Sensing of Environment 2003, 88 (1-2), 80-99. • Steven, M.D.; Malthus, T.J.; Baret, F.; Xu, H.; Chopping, M.J. Intercalibration of vegetation indices from different sensor systems. Remote Sensing of Environment 2003, 88 (4), 412-422.

16 Monitoring and Modeling

Land change models help organize the present knowledge about observed land change dynamics in particular places and they are essential in evaluating various scenarios regarding demographic, economic, institutional, and biophysical changes in terms of land change outcomes in the future.

As such, these models both are informed by and potentially inform the body of theory on land change.

Monitoring and Modeling

Methodologically, these approaches can broadly be divided into three classes in terms of how they deal with interacting processes across spatial scales.

• Top-down methods emphasize the influence of broader scale processes such as regional economic or demographic changes on the land use patterns (e.g., cellular automata (CA) models); • Bottom-up methods emphasize the emergent properties of the land change system from the interaction of many individual entities such as small- holder farmers (Agent-based modeling and spatially explicit economic models of land change); and • Hybrid methods tend to draw from existing top-down and bottom-up approaches using them in complimentary ways to reflect the bidirectional influences of broader scale processes and local-level interactions on each other.

17 Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC)

LCLUC is an interdisciplinary scientific theme that includes to:

1. perform repeated inventories of landscape change (from space) 2. develop scientific understanding and models necessary to simulate the processes taking place 3. evaluate consequences of observed and predicted changes 4. further understand consequences on environmental goods and services and management of natural resources

LCLUC research is critical to improve our understanding of human interaction with the environment, and provide a scientific foundation for sustainability, vulnerability and resilience of land systems and their use.

18 Monitoring natural resources often requires synoptic views and consistent, repeat samplings that many forms of remote sensing can provide.

The linkage between remote sensing and natural processes on the ground is always challenging, requiring explicit consideration of many issues that may not be faced by either a natural resource manager or a remote sensing specialist alone.

Therefore, the decision to incorporate remote sensing into a monitoring program requires careful considerations.

Two aspects of long-term natural resource monitoring make it especially challenging.

First, monitoring requires the development of robust baselines that must survive changes in sensors, personnel, data, and archiving procedures over long periods of time. When issues arise in the future, the baselines must be flexible enough to allow retrospective analysis of issues not considered important today.

Second, ecological monitoring often requires tracking of multiple – often unrelated – resources simultaneously. This may require consideration of methodologies that are more generic than those that might be developed to track a single attribute, or of multiple methodologies that can either be treated separately or in an integrated structure.

19 Land-cover change can be generally divided into conversions from one type into another, i.e. between-class changes, and transformations within a land cover type, i.e. within-class change.

Between-class change represents a significant disturbance of landscape, e.g., from forest to cleared land. Remote sensing is very effective and has been broadly applied in between-class change detections.

Within-class change detection identifies transformations within one land cover type. Examples include degradation of forest and habitats due to a variety of natural and anthropogenic impacting factors; forest succession over years; and change in biophysical properties such as biomass accumulation.

What kinds of changes need to be observed?

Possibilities include: 1. Land cover conversion and change from one type to another, e.g., deforestation, urbanization (i.e. between-class changes) 2. Change in cover condition (e.g., degraded or disturbed forest, stress, fires) 3. Cover transition (e.g., forest succession change from one type to another over many years such as pine to oak-hickory transition in the SE). 4. Change in cover (biophysical) properties (e.g., biomass accumulation, LAI (i.e., within-class change)

Change detection can provide information for subsequent decision-making.

20 21 National Aeronautics and Space Administration February 14, 2003

NRA-03-OES-03

RESEARCH ANNOUNCEMENT

INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE IN THE NASA EARTH SCIENCE ENTERPRISE

______Notice of Intent due – March 14, 2003 Proposals due – May 1, 2003

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 NOAA Coastal Change Analysis Program

31 EPA’s Landscape Science Program

Research Objectives

• Develop landscape assessment approaches/simple models to assist in the identification and prioritization of watersheds/water bodies vulnerable to non-point source pollution (regional scale down) • Develop new remote sensing approaches to improve assessments of watersheds/water bodies at risk to non-point source pollution • Conduct regional and national assessments (historic/current/alternative futures) of watersheds/water bodies vulnerable to non-point source pollution • Develop tools to aid environmental decision makers in evaluating vulnerability of watersheds/water bodies vulnerable to non-point source pollution.

32 Key Research Areas

• Data enhancement/improved accuracy • Detecting landscape features/pattern with new sensors • Detecting landscape features/pattern using new analysis techniques • Change detection • Landscape indicators/model development • Statistical approaches to improve interpretations/assessments

EPA’s Green Infrastructure Initiative

• Develop urbanization-response relationships for habitat and biotic communities across New England • Compare condition of watersheds with green infrastructure (GI) BMPs/LID with expected condition based on watershed development (90% CI) – Historical data – New survey of watersheds with GI BMP/LID • Diagnose cause of development-related impairments and recovery trajectories for BMP/LID remediation.

33 Predicting Biotic Community Response to Urbanization Using High-Resolution Land-use / Land-cover Data

1-m NAIP imagery

30-m NLCD data Impervious surface area derived from 1-m NAIP data

Shelburne Bay – Burlington (HUC10) Black River – S. Vermont (HUC10)

34 Mill River – Burlington, VT Calendar Brook – NE Vermont

North Branch Deerfield River – S. Vermont

35 36 Post-classification change detection involves comparison of thematic information obtained from separate classifications or interpretations of multidate remote sensing imagery data on pixel-by-pixel or segment-by- segment basis.

This approach is easy to implement and reliable for quantitative evaluation of changes that happened between the time periods.

Since post-classification approach is based on the thematic information that are available already, it provides quantified information on “from-to” change classes which is among the primary interests of end users.

However post-classification approach is challenged by some limitations. Error propagation is one factor that needs to be considered.

The accuracy of post-classification change detection depends on the accuracy of each individual classification or interpretation of multidate remote sensing data. Therefore detected changes could be a result from erroneous pixels or segments due to misclassification, misinterpretation, or mis-registration errors on original remote sensing images and the derivatives of thematic information.

Consistency is another challenge. Since the multidate thematic data could be generated by different individuals, differences between classification or interpretation procedures may eventually cause a false change detection result.

37 Multiple Date Composite Image Change Detection places rectified multiple dates of imagery in a single dataset. This composite dataset can be analyzed to extract change information.

For example, a traditional classification using all n bands may be performed.

Unsupervised classification techniques will result in the creation of change and no-change clusters. The analyst must then label the clusters accordingly.

Multiple Date Composite Image Change Detection