Land Use and Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services research examines how landscapes—forests, wetlands, farmland, cities—produce the material and regulatory benefits that human societies depend on, from clean water and carbon storage to crop pollination and flood control. As land use shifts through agricultural expansion, urban growth, and infrastructure development, these benefits are redistributed or lost in ways that rarely respect national borders, making global-scale analysis essential. A central challenge is quantifying where services are generated, who receives them, and how trade-offs emerge when the same land is pressed to serve competing needs simultaneously. Active work focuses on integrating fine-grained spatial data with socioeconomic models to guide conservation priorities and land governance in ways that hold up under projected climate and demographic change.

Works

113,170

Total citations

2,374,146

Keywords

Ecosystem ServicesLand Use ChangeUrbanizationGlobal ImpactBiodiversity ConservationSustainability