Special Issue "Strategies for Sustainable Land Use: An Environmental Science Perspective"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ruediger Schaldach
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Center for Environmental Systems Research (CESR), University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany
Interests: land-use systems; integrated modeling; atmosphere–land interactions; strategies for sustainable resource management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Humanity has transformed large parts of the Earth’s land surface into settlement, agriculture, and managed forests with significant impacts on the structure and functioning of ecosystems. For example, the main drivers of deforestation and the loss of biodiversity are the expansion and intensification of cropland and pasture needed to satisfy the increasing demand for food, biomaterials, and bioenergy due to changing consumption patterns of an ever-growing world population. The looming climate crisis is likely to further increase pressures on the amount and quality of land resources. Hence, the development and implementation of more environmentally compatible land-use strategies that respect planetary boundaries becomes one of the key challenges for science, policy, and society in the coming decades. In this context, it will be necessary to identify and overcome conflicts of interest between differentland uses in addition to disentangling and quantifying causal relationships between the drivers of land-use change and the resulting environmental impacts across spatial scales.  

The purpose of this Special Issue is to contribute to a better scientific understanding of these tradeoffs and causal relationships and to discuss strategies for more sustainable forms of land use from an environmental science perspective. It is open to submissions of original research papers and review articles that focus on case studies as well as on innovative analytical methods (e.g., simulation models, remote sensing approaches) and indicators. Analyses on the regional and the global scale are welcome. Topics include but are not limited to the following: (1) Methods for quantifying and monitoring land-use change and degradation of environmental systems. (2) Tradeoffs between agricultural/forest production and protection of natural resources (water, soil). (3) Bioeconomy and sustainable land use. (4) Modeling of transnational impacts of human consumption on land and water use, ecosystems, and biodiversity (telecoupling, footprints). (5) Modeling and remote sensing methods to support the development of new strategies for sustainable land use on different scale levels.

We expect this Special Issue will become an important reference for state-of-the art methods to analyze and evaluate tradeoffs and competition between different land uses and their environmental impacts, but also on the exploration of new pathways towards more sustainable land-use practices across scales.

Prof. Dr. Ruediger Schaldach
Guest Editor

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 papers will be 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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 1900 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 change
  • environmental impacts
  • sustainable land use
  • modeling and remote sensing
  • environmental footprints

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Biodiversity Monitoring in Long-Distance Food Supply Chains: Tools, Gaps and Needs to Meet Business Requirements and Sustainability Goals
Sustainability 2021, 13(15), 8536; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158536 - 30 Jul 2021
Viewed by 353
Abstract
Rampant loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services undermines the resilience of food systems. Robust knowledge on impacts is the first step to taking action, but long-distance food supply chains and indirect effects on and around farms make understanding impacts a challenge. This paper [...] Read more.
Rampant loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services undermines the resilience of food systems. Robust knowledge on impacts is the first step to taking action, but long-distance food supply chains and indirect effects on and around farms make understanding impacts a challenge. This paper looks at the tools available for businesses in the food industry, especially retailers, to monitor and assess the biodiversity performance of their products. It groups tools according to their general scope to evaluate what is monitored (processes on-site, pressures on landscapes, impacts on species), at what scale (specific products, company performance, country-wide consumption levels), and compared to which baseline (pristine nature, alternative scenarios, governance targets). Altogether we find major gaps in the criteria for biodiversity or the criteria is weak in certification and standards, business accounting and reporting systems, and scientific modelling and analysis (biodiversity footprints). At the same time, massive investments have been made to strengthen existing tools, develop new ones, increase uptake and improve their effectiveness. We argue that business can and must take a leading role toward mitigating biodiversity impacts in partnership with policy makers and customers. Zero-deforestation commitments, for example, will need to be upheld by supporting changed practices in consumption (e.g., choice editing) and combating degradation within agricultural systems will require a shift toward more regenerative forms of farming (e.g., with norms embedded in robust standard systems). Operational targets are integral to monitoring biodiversity performance across all scales. Full article
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