Human–Environment Interactions in Land Use and Regional Development

Dear Colleagues,

Human–environment interactions lie at the core of land-use change and regional development. As urbanization, globalization, and climate change accelerate, land systems worldwide are undergoing profound transformations driven by human activities such as agricultural intensification, urban expansion, infrastructure development, and resource extraction. These changes, in turn, reshape ecosystem services, biodiversity, carbon dynamics, and human well-being, often generating complex feedbacks across spatial and temporal scales.

Recent decades have witnessed growing recognition that land-use change is not merely a biophysical process, but a socio-environmental phenomenon embedded in economic systems, governance structures, technological change, and cultural practices. Human decisions about land use influence environmental outcomes, while environmental constraints and risks—such as climate extremes, land degradation, and resource scarcity—feed back into development trajectories and spatial planning. Understanding these bidirectional interactions is essential for achieving sustainable land management, climate mitigation and adaptation, and equitable regional development.

Despite substantial progress, existing studies often remain fragmented, focusing either on environmental impacts of land-use change or on socio-economic drivers in isolation. There is a pressing need for integrative research that explicitly links human behavior, policy interventions, and institutional arrangements with land-system dynamics and environmental outcomes. Advances in remote sensing, spatial modeling, big data analytics, and integrated assessment methods now provide unprecedented opportunities to analyze human–environment interactions across multiple scales, from local land parcels to regional and global systems.

Against this backdrop, research on human–environment interactions in land use and regional development is both timely and critical. It supports evidence-based decision-making, informs land-use planning and governance, and contributes directly to global sustainability agendas, including climate neutrality, biodiversity conservation, and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide a comprehensive platform for advancing interdisciplinary research on human–environment interactions in land use and regional development, with particular emphasis on mechanisms, spatial patterns, feedback processes, and governance implications.

This Special Issue seeks to:

• Deepen understanding of how human activities, policies, and socio-economic processes drive land-use change and environmental transformation;
• Examine how environmental constraints, risks, and ecosystem dynamics influence regional development pathways;
• Promote integrative frameworks that bridge land system science, human geography, regional planning, and sustainability science;
• Highlight policy-relevant insights for land-use governance, spatial planning, and sustainable regional development.

The topic aligns closely with the scope of Land, which focuses on land-use change, land management, land-system dynamics, and the interactions between humans and land. By emphasizing coupled human–environment systems and regional development contexts, this Special Issue strengthens the journal’s interdisciplinary orientation and contributes to its mission of addressing land-related sustainability challenges through empirical, theoretical, and methodological innovation.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Coupled human–environment systems and land-use dynamics;
• Drivers, patterns, and impacts of land-use and land-cover change;
• Urbanization, rural transformation, and regional land-system evolution;
• Land-use change, ecosystem services, and human well-being;
• Climate change mitigation and adaptation through land-use strategies;
• Land-use planning, spatial governance, and policy evaluation;
• Social inequality, vulnerability, and environmental justice in land use;
• Technological change (e.g., remote sensing, AI, big data) in land-system analysis;
• Multi-scale and telecoupled land-use interactions;
• Sustainable land management and nature-based solutions.

The Special Issue welcomes a variety of article types, including:

• Original research articles presenting empirical, theoretical, or modeling-based studies;
• Review articles synthesizing recent advances, conceptual frameworks, or methodological developments;
• Case studies offering in-depth insights into specific regions or land-use contexts;
• Methodological papers introducing novel data sources, analytical techniques, or integrated assessment approaches.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Shaojian Wang
Dr. Haimeng Liu
Dr. Hengyu Gu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• human–environment interactions
• land-use change
• regional development
• coupled human–natural systems
• spatial governance
• sustainable land management