Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Christine Fürst, we wish to acknowledge our reviewers who so generously offer their time to review the papers submitted to Land by presenting an award to the reviewers who have demonstrated their dedication, professionalism, and timeliness in reviewing manuscripts for Land.

What are the pre-requisites to be eligible for this award?
All of the reviewers for Land in 2023 will be automatically included.

Selection Criteria:
– Number of review reports;
– The quality and timeliness of review reports.

What will the winners receive?
There will be three winners this year, and each will receive the following:
– CHF 500;
– An opportunity to publish a paper free of charge in 2024 after peer review (The paper type must be article/review);
– An electronic certificate.

When will the winners be announced?
The winners will be announced in March 2024 on the journal website.

How can I make myself eligible?
If you have not yet reviewed papers for Land, but would like to do so, you can register as a reviewer at the following link:
https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer/profile/edit.

Kind regards,
Land Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that Land is now inviting nominations for the Land 2023 Young Investigator Award. This prize will be given to one young investigator in recognition of their excellence in the field of land. All nominations will be assessed by an Award Evaluation Committee led by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Christine Fürst.

The Prize:
– CHF 2000;
– Option to publish one paper free of charge in Land after peer review before the end of 2024 (The paper type must be article/review);
– An electronic certificate.

Eligibility and Requirements:
– Must have received their PhD no more than 10 years prior to 31 December 2023;
– Must have produced ground-breaking research and made a significant contribution to the advancement of land;
– Candidates must be nominated by senior scientists.

List of Documents for Nomination:
– Detailed Curriculum Vitae, including an updated publication list and a list of the researcher’s own research grants;
– Scanned copy of doctorate certificate;
– Signed nomination letters from two established senior scientists.

Schedule:
– Open for nomination: 31 March 2023
– Nomination deadline: 31 December 2023
– Winner announcement: 31 May 2024

How to Submit Nominations?
The nominations must be submitted online.

Contact:
Ms. Tasha Wang
Marketing Specialist
Email: [email protected]

Kind regards,
Land Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Land 2022 Influential Female Research in Land System Science Award: Prof. Dr. Harini Nagendra and Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey.

Prof. Dr. Harini Nagendra is Director of the Research Center at Azim Premji University, where she also leads the Center for Climate Change and Sustainability. Over the past 30 years, her research has explored landscape ecology in forests and cities of South Asia. Her accomplishments include the 2009 US National Academy of Sciences Cozzarelli Prize, the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award, and the 2017 Clarivate Web of Science award. She is the author of “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” and “Cities and Canopies: Trees of Indian Cities” and over 150 published papers included in journals such as Nature, Nature Sustainability, and Science. She is a Steering Committee member of the Future Earth Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society, and an Advisory Board Member of the Urban Knowledge Advisory Network.

Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey is an environmental scientist and landscape planner. She has worked as a Professor for the Chair of Planning Landscape and Urban Systems at the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development, ETH Zürich (Switzerland), since 2008. Her current research focus is how the interactions and/or actions of humans shape landscapes at various temporal and spatial scales, using different land-use decision models in forecasting and backcasting modes. Dr. Grêt-Regamey has an outstanding publication record, comprising more than 160 publications in peer-reviewed international journals. In 2017, she received an ERC Starting Grant for the project GLOBESCAPE linking design and land system science to foster place making in peri-urban landscapes. In 2018, she was a finalist for the ETH ALEA Art of Leadership Award. She has acquired more than eight Mio CHF secondparty resources and third-party funding as a PI.

As the awardees, Prof. Dr. Harini Nagendra and Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey will each receive an honorarium of CHF 1500, an offer to publish a paper free of charge in 2023 in Land after peer-review, and an electronic certificate.

We would like to thank the nominees for their participation, and we hope this award can further encourage female scientists to contribute to the advancement of land science.

Kind Regards,
Land Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Land 2022 Reviewer Award. The Land Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Land. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround are maintained.

Dr. Concetta Cardillo
Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Center for Agricultural Policies and Bioeconomy, Rome, Italy
Research Interests: farming; innovation; strategy; business administration; statistical data analysis; rural development; agricultural economics; strategic analysis; sustainable agriculture; food systems

Dr. Elisabetta Maria Venco
Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Research Interests: advanced urban planning; risks reduction; urban flexibility; sustainability; nature-based solutions; resilience; multicriteria technique and evaluation; healthy city; urban planning; soft mobility; energy communities

Dr. Małgorzata Dudzińska
Faculty of Geoengineering, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Olsztyn, Poland
Research Interests: rural areas; agricultural land consolidations; level of socioeconomic development; rate of changes in socioeconomic conditions

The Prize for Each Winner:
– CHF 500;
– An opportunity to publish a paper free of charge in Land in 2023 after peer review (the paper type must be article/review);
– An electronic certificate.

Kind regards,
Land Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Land, I am pleased to announce the winners of the Land 2022 Travel Awards.

The award has been granted to Dr. Rocky Talchabhadel, who is a post-doctoral fellow in Texas A&M AgriLife Research; and Dr Leah Renwick, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Chile.

With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were challenging. We would like to thank all the applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics. On behalf of the assessment committee, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Christine Fürst
Editor-in-Chief, Land

Dear Colleagues,

The editorial team would like to congratulate the winners of the Land 2021 10th Anniversary Best Paper Award, who were chosen by a selection committee chaired by the section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Thomas Panagopoulos. Following a review process by the Award Evaluation Committee, six winners were selected.

Review:
The First Prize: (CHF 600 + a paper free of charge after peer review + an electronic certificate)
Restoring the Unrestored: Strategies for Restoring Global Land during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UN-DER)
By Purushothaman Chirakkuzhyil Abhilash
Land 2021, 10(2), 201; doi:10.3390/land10020201

The Second Prize: (CHF 400 + a paper free of charge after peer review + an electronic certificate)
Land Use Transitions: Progress, Challenges and Prospects
By Hualou Long, Yingnan Zhang, Li Ma and Shuangshuang Tu
Land 2021, 10(9), 903; doi:10.3390/land10090903

The Third Prize: (a paper free of charge after peer review + an electronic certificate)
The Evolution of City-as-a-Platform: Smart Urban Development Governance with Collective Knowledge-Based Platform Urbanism
By Palmyra Repette, Jamile Sabatini-Marques, Tan Yigitcanlar, Denilson Sell and Eduardo Costa
Land 2021, 10(1), 33; doi:10.3390/land10010033

Article:
The First Prize: (CHF 500 + a paper free of charge after peer review + an electronic certificate)
The Integration of New-Type Urbanization and Rural Revitalization Strategies in China: Origin, Reality and Future Trends
By Mingxing Chen, Yuan Zhou, Xinrong Huang and Chao Ye
Land 2021, 10(2), 207; doi:10.3390/land10020207

The Second Prize: (CHF 300 + a paper free of charge after peer review + an electronic certificate)
Fostering Carbon Credits to Finance Wildfire Risk Reduction Forest Management in Mediterranean Landscapes
By Fermín Alcasena, Marcos Rodrigues, Pere Gelabert, Alan Ager, Michele Salis, Aitor Ameztegui, Teresa Cervera and Cristina Vega-García
Land 2021, 10(10), 1104; doi:10.3390/land10101104

The Third Prize: (a paper free of charge after peer review + an electronic certificate)
Effects of Forestry Intensification and Conservation on Green Infrastructures: A Spatio-Temporal Evaluation in Sweden
By Per Angelstam and Michael Manton
Land 2021, 10(5), 531; doi:10.3390/land10050531

Please join us in congratulating the winners of Land 2021 10th Anniversary Best Paper Award. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors for their continued hard work in support of Land.

Kind regards,
Land Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Land 2021 10th Anniversary Outstanding Reviewer Award. The Land Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Land. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround is maintained. The winners of the award are as follows:

Dr. Rahul Datta

Department of Geology and Pedology, Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic
Interests: agrochemistry; soil science; microbiology; plant nutrition

Dr. Dirk H.R. Spennemann

School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Interests: conservation management; urban ecosystems; Pacific history; novel ecosystems; Indian diaspora; heritage and disasters; COVID-19; historic ecology; environmental history; intangible heritage; cultural heritage planning; heritage policy; adaptive reuse

Dr. Raimundo Jimenez-Ballesta

(Retired recently) of the Department of Geology and Geochemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain
Interests: soil science; soil quality; soil contamination; soil mapping; environment; agronomy

Please join us in congratulating all three for their outstanding achievement.

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Christine Fürst
Editor-in-Chief, Land

Dear Colleagues,

As the Editor-in-Chief of Land, I am pleased to announce the winners of the Land Travel Awards in 2021.

Álvaro Castilla Beltrán, a post-doctoral fellow in the Island Ecology and Biogeography Group, Instituto Universitario de Enfermedades Tropicales y Salud Pública de Canarias, University of La Laguna, Spain.

Lauren Nerfa, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Botany, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa, USA.

With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were challenging. We would like to thank all of the applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics. All in all, we were very impressed. On behalf of the Assessment Committee, I would like to congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington
Editor-in-Chief, Land

Dear Colleagues,

The Editorial Team would like to congratulate the winners of the Land 2020 Best Paper Award, who were chosen by a selection committee chaired by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington. Following a review process by the Evaluation Committee, four winners were selected. The recipients of the Land 2020 Best Paper Award are as follows:

Reviews:

Rank 1 Award: (600 CHF + one free publication)
Impact of Agrochemicals on Soil Microbiota and Management: A Review by Ram Swaroop Meena, Sandeep Kumar,Rahul Datta, Rattan Lal, Vinod Vijayakumar, Martin Brtnicky, Mahaveer Prasad Sharma,Gulab Singh Yadav, Manoj Kumar Jhariya, Chetan Kumar Jangir, Shamina Imran Pathan,Tereza Dokulilova, Vaclav Pecina and Theodore Danso Marfo
Land 2020, 9(2), 34; doi:10.3390/land9020034

Rank 2 Award: (400 CHF + one free publication)
From City- to Site-Dimension: Assessing the Urban Ecosystem Services of Different Types of Green Infrastructure by Patrycia Brzoska andAiga Spāģe
Land 2020, 9(5), 150; doi:10.3390/land9050150

Articles:

Rank 1 Award: (500 CHF + one free publication)
Not Simply Green: Nature-Based Solutions as a Concept and Practical Approach for Sustainability Studies and Planning Agendas in Cities by Diana Dushkova and Dagmar Haase
Land 2020, 9(1), 19; doi:10.3390/land9010019

Rank 2 Award: (300 CHF + one free publication)
A Theoretical Framework for Bolstering Human-Nature Connections and Urban Resilience via Green Infrastructure by Jackie Parker and Greg D. Simpson
Land 2020, 9(8), 252; doi:10.3390/land9080252

Please join us in congratulating the winners of the Land 2020 Best Paper Award. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors for your continued support of Land.

Land Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce the winners of the Land 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Award. The Land Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Land. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround is maintained.

Carlo Rega
European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), Via E, Fermi 2749, Ispra, VA, Italy

Maria Rosa Trovato
Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Catania, Città Universitaria, Viale Andrea Doria, 6, 95125, Catania, Italy

Ileana Pătru-Stupariu
Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, ICUB, Transdisciplinary Research Centre Landscape-Territory-Information Systems, CeLTIS, 050095 Bucharest, Romania
Department of Regional Geography and Environment, Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest, 010041 Bucharest, Romania

The first and second winners will receive the following:
– 500 Swiss francs (CHF);
– A certificate;
– A chance to publish a paper free-of-charge in Land in 2021.

The third winner will receive the following:
– A certificate;
– A chance to publish a paper free-of-charge in Land in 2021.

Kind regards,
Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington
Editor-in-Chief, Land

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of Land, it gives me great pleasure to announce the three winners of the 2020 Travel Award sponsored by Land. Given the abundance of outstanding applicants, the award committee had to take particular care and consideration when deciding upon the winners.

The Travel Award was granted to Dr. Cynthia Isley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, Macquarie University, Australia; Ms. Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen, Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Denmark; and Ms. Rebecca Riggs, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Canada.

Dr. Cynthia Isley’s research aims to identify and reduce contaminant exposure, benefiting society through providing scientifically tested advice to citizens living in contaminated areas. As well as being involved in the citizen science programs VegeSafe and DustSafe, which are focused on broadening community knowledge of contaminants and promoting safe gardening practices, Dr. Isley is investigating the most effective methods to remove perfluorinated substances (PFAS) from contaminated groundwater, an emerging global environmental concern of great significance to health and economic development.

Ms. Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen seeks to reveal the impacts of urban environmental changes on people’s health outcomes across the life course. Her work is characterized a synergy of machine learning, remote sensing, and human geography. In her current project, she is using Landsat time-series and deep learning approaches to investigate urban densification in Denmark and mental health trajectories during the rural–urban migration process. In her ongoing and future research, she is keen to understand how medium-sized cities transit, and how their influences on human well-being differ in European countries compared to the Global South.

Ms. Rebecca Riggs seeks to contribute to understanding the drivers of change in rural forest landscapes and the opportunities for sustainable development. For her doctoral research, Rebecca examined forest landscapes in Cambodia to understand local perceptions and institutional leverage points for nurturing landscape transitions for prosperity and sustainability. She is interested in how systems approaches support evidence-based decision making, including identifying social and environmental trade-offs and communicating evidence to decision-makers. Through her work, Rebecca hopes to demonstrate the value of place-based sustainability science and the importance of engaging with people in landscapes where changes are occurring.

The prize consists of 800 Swiss Francs each to support travel for attendance at an academic conference in 2020 or 2021. To encourage the passion of young researchers and enable their attendance at academic conferences, we rewarded three researchers in total.

The standard of applicants for this award was exceptionally high, with each exemplifying innovative practice and interesting approaches toward addressing land-based research issues. All of the shortlisted applicants would have been worthy recipients of this year’s travel award. This made the final decision difficult, and we would like to thank all applicants for submitting details of what was, collectively, a diverse and fascinating range of research topics. Finally, we wish to congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington
Editor-in-Chief, Land

The editorial team would like to congratulate the winners of the Land 2019 Best Paper Award, who were chosen by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington. The recipients of the “Land 2019 Best Paper Award” are as follows:

Article:

– Rank 1 Award: (500 CHF + one free publication by 31 June 2021)
Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), Aichi Target 11 and Canada’s Pathway to Target 1: Focusing Conservation on Reconciliation (doi: 10.3390/land8010010)
– Rank 2 Award: (300 CHF + one free publication by 31 June 2021)
Agricultural Expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado: Increased Soil and Nutrient Losses and Decreased Agricultural Productivity (doi: 10.3390/land8010012)

Review:

– Rank 1 Award: (600 CHF + one free publication by 31 June 2021)
Understanding Land in the Context of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions: A Brief History of Land in Economics (doi: 10.3390/land8010015)
– Rank 2 Award: (400 CHF + one free publication by 31 June 2021)
Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media Data for Socio-Environmental Systems Research (doi: 10.3390/land8070107)

Please join us in congratulating the winners of Land 2019 Best Paper Award. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors for your continued support of Land.

Dear Colleagues,

The Land Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy given by reviewers in checking manuscripts submitted to Land. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround is maintained.

The following referees have been selected to receive Land 2019 Outstanding Reviewer Awards for the quantity, timeliness, and quality of their reviews in 2019:

The first and second winners will receive the following:

– 500 Swiss francs (CHF);

– A certificate;

– A chance to publish a paper free-of-charge in Land within a year.

Prof. Dr. Frank Vanclay

Director, Urban & Regional Studies Institute, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Prof. Dr. Volker Beckmann

Faculty of Law and Economics & Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, University of Greifswald, Soldmann Str. 15, 17487 Greifswald, Germany

A further one winner will receive the following:
–– A chance to publish a paper free of charge in Land within a year;
–– A certificate.

Dr. Antonio Santoro

Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry, University of

Florence, via San Bonaventura 13, 50145 Florence, Italy

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of Land, I am pleased to announce the two winners of the 2019 Travel Awards sponsored by Land:

The Travel Awards were granted to Dr. Catalina Munteanu, Postdoctoral fellow in the Conservation Biogeography Lab, Geography Department, Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, Germany, and Ms. Elizabeth Tellman, PH.D. student in the Arizona State University School of Geographical Science and Urban Planning, Tempe, AZ, USA.

Dr. Catalina Munteanu’s research aims to understand and disentangle the legacies of past human activities so that we can make better conservation and land management decisions for the future. Her work spans the disciplines of land use science, landscape ecology, and conservation science to address issues relevant at both regional and global scales. In her current project, EcoSpy She uses declassified historical, global, high-resolution spy satellite photographs from the Cold War era (Corona) at broad scales to extend the temporal scale of ecological and conservation remote sensing studies as far back as the 1960s.

Ms. Elizabeth Tellman seeks to understand the causes and consequences of environmental change. Her dissertation investigates illicit and clandestine drivers of land use change by examining electoral politics and urban expansion in Mexico City and narcotrafficking and deforestation in Central America. She will continue to shine a light on the hidden processes of change as satellites and data on land transactions increase in spatial and temporal resolution.

The prize consist of 800 Swiss Francs each to support travel for attendance at an academic conference in 2019.

It was a difficult decision with such high-quality applications for the awards and we would like to thank all applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics. We congratulate the
winners for their accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington
Editor-in-Chief of Land

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of Land, I am pleased to announce the two winners of the 2018 Travel Awards sponsored by Land:

The Travel Awards were granted to Dr. Giulia Sofia, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Padova, Italy and Mrs. Khadiza Begum, Ph.D. student in the Institute of Biological and Environmental Science, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom.

Dr. Giulia Sofia’s research focusses on hydrogeomorphic feature extraction from high-resolution topography. Through such an approach, her most recent research aims to model and quantify interlocking relations between soil properties, the geometry of the drainage network and climatic inputs, to investigate how they determine the watershed response. She plans to expand this analysis to understand how network properties influence flood regimes at a larger scale.

Mrs. Khadiza Begum’s research area mainly focuses on greenhouse (GHG) mitigation potentials under improved management practices on Bangladesh rice crop land. The DayCent model was used to simulate covering 64 districts of Bangladesh, considering diverse soil types and climatic variability. Modelled results suggest that in an integrated management scenario consisting of reduced water, tillage with residue management, reduced fertilization offsets GHG emissions while maintaining yield. Further research is required to expand the model evaluation across robust measured datasets at a finer resolution.

The awards consist of 800 Swiss Francs each to support travel towards their attendance at an academic conference in 2018.

Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington
Editor-in-Chief of Land

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2017 Travel Award sponsored by Land:
The Travel Award has been granted to Mr. Michael Lathuillière, a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Mr. Michael Lathuillière focuses his research on land and water management in Southern Amazonia (Brazil) where soybean and pasture have been expanding since the 1990s. The objective of his Ph.D. research is to quantify how land use change has affected the regional water cycle by focusing on the transfer of water vapor to the atmosphere. He plans to complement this research with an analysis of the carbon cycle with the intention of quantifying the effects of regional agricultural expansion and intensification on land and water use, as well as carbon sequestration and emissions.