Dear Colleagues,

Agricultural ecosystems supply a wide range of supporting, regulating, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services. The sustainable use of these agroecosystem services is a key factor for the next generations. From an environmentally perspective, agrarian landscapes are very sensitive areas, with very heterogeneous human–environment interactions and increasing anthropogenic pressures. For the sustainable land use planning of these areas, a deep understanding of the recent ecological, environmental, and economic processes of the agrarian landscapes is necessary. For this purpose, we need to analyze the main driving forces, dynamics, and characteristics of the recent land use transformations of agrarian landscapes, such as in the case of urban sprawl and other rural–urban interactions. If we want to protect the natural value of agroecosystems and the biodiversity of agricultural landscapes, we need to consider the connections between the landscape pattern and the landscape ecological processes based on the “pattern and process” paradigm. To protect the productivity of agroecosystems, it is necessary to understand the environmental processes generated by climate change, and their impacts on the agricultural landscapes.

For this Special Issue, we welcome empirical and conceptual research papers and literature reviews to provide possible solutions that minimize the environmental pressures on agrarian landscapes generated by anthropogenic processes, and to mitigate the potential effects of climate change. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a very fast peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications. Specifically, we welcome papers focused on, or related to, the topics listed as below:

• Sustainable land use of agricultural landscapes.
• Social, ecological, and economic sustainability of rural landscapes.
• Conserving ecosystem services across agricultural landscapes.
• Land productivity and economic sustainability of agricultural landscapes.
• Land use transformations from agrarian landscapes into energy landscapes.
• Recent and predicted land use change of agricultural landscapes.
• Biodiversity of agricultural landscapes.
• Landscape patterns and landscape ecological processes of agricultural landscapes.
• Landscape analyses of agricultural landscapes with remote sensing and GIS methods.
• Climate change and the mitigation of agrarian landscapes.
• Environmental sensitivity of agrarian landscapes.
• Rural–urban fringe as a conflict zone.
• Economic sustainability of agrarian landscapes.
• Protection of land productivity.

Dr. Peter Szilassi
Guest Editor

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