Sustainable Use of Soils and Water: the Role of Environmental Land Use Conflicts

Dear Colleagues,

In many rural watersheds land use changes trigger soil and water degradation hampering the ecosystems to provide enough food and quality freshwater as service to human kind. The negative impacts of land use changes on soil and water have been discussed in many studies but the full causes and paths of degradation remain poorly understood.

Some recent studies have analyzed land use changes and their impacts on soil and water through comparisons of actual and natural land uses also called land capabilities. In that context, it has been reported the amplification of soil losses and nutrient exports to stream water in areas where the actual use deviates considerably from land capability. These areas are said to be in environmental land use conflict. Severe conflicts frequently occur where, for example, steep slope hillsides that are used for agriculture (e.g. vineyards) instead of being protected with forest cover. Besides amplification of soil losses and nutrient exports, environmental land use conflicts have also been related to decreases in soil fertility (through losses of organic matter), groundwater quality and aquatic biodiversity.

Despite the recent developments on the study of environmental land use conflicts, the full path from a sustainable use that respects capability to a use that degrades the full ecosystem needs to be further studied. Following this rationale, the purpose of this special issue is to collect contributions in the topics of:

• Changes in soil structure as well as in physical and chemical properties of soil triggered by land use changes;
• Impacts of land use changes on vegetation vigor (e.g., through assessment of NDVI - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index);
• Impacts of land use changes on crop productivity;
• Innovative analysis and modeling of environmental land use conflicts and their impacts;
• Integrative assessment of environmental land use conflicts and their multiple impacts;
• Environmental land use conflicts at plot, watershed and larger scales;
• Environmental land use conflicts and time;
• Mitigation of environmental land use conflicts towards the sustainable use of soil and water.

I believe that this Special Issue may help bring land use planners to the conscience that sustainable use of soils and water begins with a land use or occupation based on capability, and that deviation from this reality inevitably leads ecosystems to danger and ultimately to collapse as service providers.

Thank you very much for your contributions.

Prof. Fernando A.L. Pacheco
Guest Editor

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