Rethinking the Man-Land Relations in China

Dear Colleagues,

Land is an essential natural resource, both for the survival and prosperity of humanity, and for the maintenance of all terrestrial ecosystems. Through much of the course of human history, as a fundamental factor of production, it has been tightly coupled to economic growth. As a result, control over land and its use is often an object of intense human interactions.  Man-land relationship reflects the interdependence and interaction between man and nature. China has experienced a great transition-the unprecedented urbanization, industrialization, and globalization, which presents man-land relations with new challenges on many fronts. Creating the built environment to house urban populations and their activities is one of the fundamental aspects of urbanization. This dynamic adds pressure to potentially strained food systems and threatens livelihoods in vulnerable regions. In fact, this is only a miniature of the changing man-land interactions in China. The complex interactions between humans and land are so broad that encompass excessive intensification of agricultural land, land degradation, farmland abandonment, emerging "hollow villages", land fragmentation, urban renewal, congested traffic, a housing shortage, etc. There is currently insufficient research into the changes in man-land relations in China. It is necessary to use different lenses to examine various aspects of how human disturbances influence land use system and how land use changes affect human well-being. Therefore, a reconsideration of man-land relations in this rapidly changing age should be put on the agenda. 

This Special Issue seeks to reexamine these changes in man-land relations in transitional China, and rethink our understanding of the human-environment interactions of both urban and rural areas, thus advancing theories in land use science as a major component of land management and sustainability science.

Potential topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• Regularities of the evolving man-land relations
• Telecoupled land-use changes
• Architecture of the global man-land interactions
• Land use transition and its environmental effects
• Land use conflicts/trade-offs
• Land degradation
• Multifunctional land use
• Urban sprawl and regeneration
• Urban-rural migration and housing affairs
• Urban infrastructure
• Rural land use
• Land system reform
• Farmland transfer
• “Non-grain” utilization of cultivated land and food security
• Landscape and ecological system service
• Big data technology and Remote Sensing applied in the above-mentioned fields

Dr. Li Ma
Dr. Yingnan Zhang
Dr. Muye Gan
Dr. Zhengying Shan
Guest Editors

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