Event Details

DSNE seminar with Patrick Meyfroidt, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Changes in land systems generate many sustainability challenges.Identifying more sustainable land-use alternatives requires solid theoretical foundations on the causes of land-use/cover changes, acknowledging the systemic linkages between distinct and distant land-use dynamics.

I will explain the journey of land system science from a focus on local contingency and context-dependent explanations towards middle-range theories – i.e., contextual generalizations that describe chains of causal mechanisms explaining a well-bounded range of phenomena, as well as the conditions that trigger, enable, or prevent these causal chains.

I will then discuss some key theories of higher-level land system change processes, focusing on land-use spillovers – including land sparing and rebound effects with intensification, leakage, indirect land-use change, and land-use displacement – , and (ii) land-use transitions,defined as structural non-linear shifts in land systems.

Link to join via Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85434124002?pwd=SS8xcEd3bXBPT1kwYTFaV0lBYUxvUT09