Land Use and Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services are the benefits that functioning landscapes provide to people — clean water, carbon storage, pollination, flood regulation — and land use change is one of the fastest ways those benefits are gained or lost. As agriculture expands, cities grow, and natural habitats are converted or restored, researchers map how these shifts ripple across local communities and planetary systems simultaneously, tracing the uneven geography of who gains resources and who bears the costs. A central open question is how to quantify trade-offs when intensifying land for food production in one region undermines biodiversity or water security in another, sometimes thousands of kilometers away through trade and teleconnected ecosystems. Work at the frontier is pushing toward dynamic, spatially explicit models that can inform land governance decisions under climate uncertainty, aiming to identify where conservation, restoration, or careful urban design can sustain human well-being without eroding the ecological foundations that make it possible.

Works

110,165

Total citations

2,304,407

Keywords

Ecosystem ServicesLand Use ChangeUrbanizationGlobal ImpactBiodiversity ConservationSustainability