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Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability" (2nd...
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Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability" (2nd Edition)

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 1583

Editors

Dr. Lucia Rocchi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, 06123 Perugia, Italy
Interests: natural resource management; spatial multi criteria assessment; ecosystem service assessment and management; decision support system
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Giovanni Ottomano Palmisano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Soil, Plant and Food Sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro,70126 Bari, Italy
Interests: sustainable rural development; agro-food economics; sustainable food systems; territorial planning; decision analysis; sustainability assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a call for submissions to the “Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability"”. This Special Issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research, critical reviews, and novel case studies that explore the dynamic interplay between land use practices, environmental and social impact assessments, and pathways toward sustainable development. Land use and land management have significant socio-cultural, economic, and ecological impacts, affecting sustainability from local to global scales. Understanding such impacts is a crucial aspect of advancing sustainable land use and management practices, in particular in the context of the restoration of natural ecosystems or disturbed environments, such as the peri-urban areas.

This Special Issue particularly welcomes studies on land use and management, practices and policies, and their impacts on all the dimensions of sustainability. We invite the submission of papers that address assessment and evaluation methods and frameworks (ecosystem services/nature’s contributions to people's wellbeing, multifunctionality, and sustainability), the development of indicators and indices, and the presentation of approaches to how land use and land management can be transformed to improved sustainability.

We invite high-quality contributions that address (but are not limited to) the following themes:

  • Integrated land use planning and policy;
  • Environmental and social impact assessment methodologies;
  • Sustainable land management and restoration;
  • Land use change and its implications for climate, biodiversity, and water;
  • Urbanization and green infrastructure development;
  • Restoration of natural ecosystems;
  • Nature-based solution for sustainable land management;
  • Cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary approaches to sustainability.

Dr. Lucia Rocchi
Dr. Giovanni Ottomano Palmisano
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-anonymized 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.

Keywords

  • land use and land management policies
  • land use and land management practices
  • land use impact assessment
  • sustainable land management
  • land use decision making
  • nature restoration

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

37 pages, 17904 KB  
Article
Coupling Trend–Pattern Dynamics for Synergistic Governance: A Multi-Scale Assessment of Carbon Emissions and Ecosystem Services in the Yellow River Basin
by Miaomiao Hu, Fei Li and Qingwu Yan
Land 2026, 15(8), 1359; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081359 - 29 Jul 2026
Abstract
Achieving synergistic governance between carbon emissions and ecosystem service value (ESV) in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) remains a significant challenge. Existing studies often rely on a single administrative scale and rarely extend spatial clustering results toward governance-oriented zoning frameworks that support differentiated [...] Read more.
Achieving synergistic governance between carbon emissions and ecosystem service value (ESV) in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) remains a significant challenge. Existing studies often rely on a single administrative scale and rarely extend spatial clustering results toward governance-oriented zoning frameworks that support differentiated management. To bridge these gaps, we developed a multi-scale remote sensing framework by integrating the China Land Cover Dataset (CLCD), NPP/VIIRS nighttime light (NTL) imagery, and energy consumption statistics to examine carbon emissions and ESV across the YRB at both county and grid scales. We estimated land-use carbon emissions by integrating emission coefficients with NTL modeling, while ESV was quantified via the equivalent factor method. By coupling dynamic carbon–ESV trends with their spatial association patterns (derived from bivariate LISA), we established a dual-dimensional Trend–Pattern framework for synergistic governance. Our findings reveal a pronounced asymmetry in regional development: while carbon emissions surged from 235 to 1033 million tons, ESV grew by a marginal 0.13% annually. Although carbon emissions and ESV are significantly negatively correlated (p < 0.001), this relationship diverges across scales—weakening at the county level but intensifying at the grid level. Notably, grid-scale analysis identified a contraction of over 56% in “Low carbon–High ESV” synergistic clusters in the upper reaches. This critical signal of declining carbon–ecological synergy was completely obscured by the averaging effect inherent in county-level assessments. Capitalizing on these scale-dependent insights, we delineated seven distinct governance zones, including Trend Control and Ecological Conservation Zones, thereby transitioning from mere spatial description to decision support for zoning-based governance. This study highlights the potential limitations of relying solely on single-tier administrative evaluations and offers a robust, multi-scale decision-support tool for carbon–ecological governance in the YRB. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability" (2nd Edition))
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20 pages, 3885 KB  
Article
Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of the Association Between Payments for Ecosystem Services and Satellite-Based Vegetation Dynamics in Cundinamarca, Colombia
by Andres Vergara Narvaez, Tania Jiménez Castilla and Gastón Ballut-Dajud
Land 2026, 15(8), 1340; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081340 - 25 Jul 2026
Viewed by 553
Abstract
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are increasingly used to promote conservation, but evidence of their biophysical outcomes remains mixed because participation is rarely assigned at random. This study assessed the association between participation in the Yo Protejo ¡Agua para Todos! PES program and [...] Read more.
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are increasingly used to promote conservation, but evidence of their biophysical outcomes remains mixed because participation is rarely assigned at random. This study assessed the association between participation in the Yo Protejo ¡Agua para Todos! PES program and satellite-based vegetation dynamics in Cundinamarca, Colombia, during 2015–2024. Annual NDVI, EVI, and SAVI values were derived from Landsat 8 and 9 imagery processed in Google Earth Engine. The empirical strategy combined fixed-effects difference-in-differences models, two spatial comparison groups, propensity-score adjustment, inverse probability of treatment weighting, property-clustered inference, event-study diagnostics, differential-trend models, and property-year robustness analyses. Pre-treatment and covariate-balance diagnostics indicated imperfect counterfactual comparability, particularly for the external 500–1000 m buffer-ring controls. No vegetation index produced uniformly positive and robust associations across specifications. NDVI showed a small positive association during program implementation under the 500 m neighboring-control definition, but this result was not preserved after differential-trend adjustment or property-year aggregation. EVI produced positive point-level estimates under the external control, although this specification retained substantial residual imbalance and the estimates became negative after property-year aggregation. SAVI provided no robust positive evidence and showed negative post-implementation differentials in some external-control models. Overall, the estimated associations were sensitive to the vegetation metric, comparison-group definition, temporal phase, inferential level, and spatial aggregation. The results should therefore be interpreted as specification-dependent adjusted associations rather than definitive causal effects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability" (2nd Edition))
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25 pages, 16621 KB  
Article
Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Driving Mechanisms of Habitat Quality in a Cultivated Land-Dominated Plain Region: A Case Study of Northern Anhui, China
by Yangxiang Ye, Jia Yuan, Zhixian Li, Yue Chen, Jiayue Xue and Jiejie Lyu
Land 2026, 15(7), 1265; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15071265 - 14 Jul 2026
Viewed by 196
Abstract
Global urbanization has caused widespread ecological degradation, yet habitat quality in agricultural plains remains understudied. This study addresses this gap by assessing and predicting land use and habitat quality changes in the Northern Anhui Plain from 2000 to 2030 using the PLUS and [...] Read more.
Global urbanization has caused widespread ecological degradation, yet habitat quality in agricultural plains remains understudied. This study addresses this gap by assessing and predicting land use and habitat quality changes in the Northern Anhui Plain from 2000 to 2030 using the PLUS and InVEST models under four scenarios (natural development, farmland protection, economic development, and sustainable development). The optimal parameters-based geographical detector (OPGD) was employed to identify driving factors. Results show that farmland continuously shrank while built-up land expanded, and habitat quality remained low and declined over time, with low-grade areas expanding. All four 2030 scenarios exhibited declines, with the farmland protection scenario yielding the highest habitat quality and the economic development scenario the lowest. The optimal spatial scale was 4 km, and discretization algorithms and break numbers significantly influenced driver analysis. Locational factors had relatively higher explanatory power, though the overall q-statistic was moderately low, indicating limited single-factor explanation. The study reveals the spatiotemporal dynamics and driving mechanisms of habitat quality in this farmland-dominated plain, providing useful insights for spatial planning and policy-making to support sustainable development in agricultural regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability" (2nd Edition))
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19 pages, 2586 KB  
Article
Research on the Impact of Green Finance on Urban Land Green Utilization Efficiency
by Qiuyan Xu, Maonan Wang and Muwen Wang
Land 2026, 15(6), 1030; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15061030 - 11 Jun 2026
Viewed by 322
Abstract
Enhancing Urban Land Green Utilization Efficiency (ULGUE) serves as a crucial cornerstone for high-quality urban development. Based on the panel data of Chinese cities from 2010 to 2023, this paper adopts the fixed-effect model, mediation effect model and spatial econometric model to systematically [...] Read more.
Enhancing Urban Land Green Utilization Efficiency (ULGUE) serves as a crucial cornerstone for high-quality urban development. Based on the panel data of Chinese cities from 2010 to 2023, this paper adopts the fixed-effect model, mediation effect model and spatial econometric model to systematically investigate the impacts, internal mechanisms and spatial spillover effects of green finance (GF) on ULGUE. The empirical results indicate that GF significantly improves ULGUE, and this core finding remains valid after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotional effect of GF varies across city types. Compared with resource-based cities, central cities and western region cities, GF exerts a more prominent enhancement effect on ULGUE in non-resource cities, non-central cities, and cities in the eastern and central regions. Mechanism tests further reveal that GF optimizes ULGUE by advancing urban industrial ecologization and ecological industrialization. In addition, the positive impact of GF is not limited to local areas; it generates favorable spatial spillover effects on neighboring regions. When the geographical distance exceeds 560 km, such spatial spillover effects gradually converge to zero. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers on "Land Use, Impact Assessment and Sustainability" (2nd Edition))
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