Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the 2020 Best Paper Award for reviews and articles which were published in Land from 1 January to 31 December 2020. Two reviews and two articles will receive this award. The papers will be selected after thorough evaluation by the journal award committee chaired by Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington, and the winners will be announced by 31 August 2021.

Eligibility for the award
– Papers published in Land from 1 January to 31 December 2020;
– Open to all career levels;
– Both regular and Special Issue submissions will be considered.

Selection criteria
The papers will be selected by the journal award committee according to the following criteria:
– Originality and significance
– Citation and download rates till 30 June2021 (data source: Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics))

Prizes
Two reviews and two articles will be selected for this award and the winners (corresponding author) will be granted a bonus based on the award class as well as an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Land, subject to the normal peer review procedure.

Review:
– First Prize: 600 CHF + one free publication
– Second Prize: 400 CHF + one free publication

Article:
– First Prize: 500 CHF + one free publication
– Second Prize: 300 CHF + one free publication

The winners will be announced by 31 August 2021.

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington, we wish to acknowledge our reviewers who so generously give their time to review papers submitted to Land. The 2020 Land Outstanding Reviewer Award will be presented to reviewers who have demonstrated exceptional dedication, professionalism and timeliness in reviewing manuscripts for Land.

Anonymous peer review is one of the cornerstones of publishing, ensuring the high quality of manuscripts for the advancement of science and engineering research. It is also often one of the most underappreciated of the many requests and demands made of subject experts. It is for this reason that the Land Editorial Team is extremely grateful to reviewers for the time, energy and dedication that they freely give to support their peers.

What are the prerequisites to be eligible for this award?
All of the reviewers for Land in 2020 will be automatically included.

There will be 3 awardees this year.

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.

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

When will the winners be announced?
The winners will be announced in February 2021 on the journal website.

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

We are inviting applications for two Travel Awards (CHF 800 each), one for PhD students and one for postdoctoral researchers, to attend a conference in 2020. The applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee chaired by the Editor-in-Chief of Land: Prof. Andrew Millington.

Candidates should fulfil the following:
–– Applicants must be postdoctoral fellows or PhD students involved in land systems science;
–– Applicants must plan to attend an international conference in 2020 to present their research (oral presentation or poster);

Applicants need to submit the following documents:
–– An abstract of their work (500 words);
–– A short CV with complete list of publications;
–– The conference you plan to attend and the oral or poster abstract that will be presented;
–– A letter of recommendation from a supervisor or PI (Principal Investigator). The supervisor or PI should sign and confirm that the applicant fulfills the requirements.

The Award will consist of 800 (Swiss Francs) each.

Please send your applications here (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/awards) by 15 January 2020 (extend to 15 February 2020). The winner will be announced in Land by 1 March 2020.

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,

We are pleased to announce the 2019 Best Paper Award for reviews and articles which were published in Land from 1 January to 31 December 2019. Two reviews and two articles will receive this award. The papers will be selected after thorough evaluation by the journal award committee chaired by Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Andrew Millington, and the winners will be announced by 31 August 2020.

Eligibility for the award
–– Papers published in Land from 1 January to 31 December 2019;
–– Open to all career levels;
–– Both regular and Special Issue submissions will be considered.

Selection criteria
The papers will be selected by the journal award committee according to the following criteria:
–– Originality and significance
–– Citation and download rates till 30 June 2020 (data source: Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)

Prizes
Two reviews and two articles will be selected for this award and the winners (corresponding author) will be granted a bonus based on the award class as well as an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Land, subject to the normal peer review procedure.

Review:
–– First Prize: 600 CHF + one free publication
–– Second Prize: 400 CHF + one free publication

Article:
–– First Prize: 500 CHF + one free publication
–– Second Prize: 300 CHF + one free publication

The winners will be announced by 31 August 2020.

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.