Land system science for global environmental change and sustainability: Advances, challenges, and future directions

Abstract

Land System Science (LSS) has evolved as a core interdisciplinary field within human-environment system research, with a particular focus on land use and land cover change (LUCC). This article reviews the emergence of LSS, explores its roles in social-ecological research on global environmental change and sustainability, and discusses its challenges and future directions. We develop a conceptual framework that highlights the role of LSS in informing sustainable land management and assessing its impacts on interrelated social-ecological goals (sustainability, resilience, and quality of life, including wellbeing) for transformative planning and governance. To ensure the continued progress of the field and its ability to address evolving global challenges, LSS needs to better implement a systems-based approach through novel methodological developments, deepen the understanding of LUCC complexities, emphasize strong sustainability, bridge global-local gaps, and enhance the science-policy interface. In addition, while LSS is inherently interdisciplinary, its progress requires further broadening and deepening of collaboration and integration among contributing disciplines.

Keywords

Land use and land cover / Land change / Deforestation / Cropland expansion / Urbanization / Human-environment system / Sustainability

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ronald C. Estoque: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Conceptualization. Jianguo Wu: Writing - review & editing. Peter H. Verburg: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

The second and third authors are Editorial Board Members of this journal and were not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through its Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) Program: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (Number 22K01038, Principal Investigator: Ronald C. Estoque) and (B) (Number 24K01817, Principal Investigator: Shoji Hashimoto). The views expressed in this paper are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of their respective institutions and the funder. The authors acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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