Thematic Profiles of Social Ecology — The Research on Human Land Use, Food and Biomass Production in European and Global Contexts

2013 ◽  
pp. 145-173
Author(s):  
Karl Bruckmeier
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Biomass Production ◽  
Social Ecology ◽  
Human Land Use

scholarly journals A research framework for projecting ecosystem change in highly diverse tropical mountain ecosystems

Oecologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Bendix ◽  
Nicolay Aguire ◽  
Erwin Beck ◽  
Achim Bräuning ◽  
Roland Brandl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Functional Traits ◽  
Biomass Production ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Ecosystem Change ◽  
Mountain Ecosystems ◽  
Abiotic Conditions ◽  
Research Framework ◽  
Tropical Mountain

AbstractTropical mountain ecosystems are threatened by climate and land-use changes. Their diversity and complexity make projections how they respond to environmental changes challenging. A suitable way are trait-based approaches, by distinguishing between response traits that determine the resistance of species to environmental changes and effect traits that are relevant for species' interactions, biotic processes, and ecosystem functions. The combination of those approaches with land surface models (LSM) linking the functional community composition to ecosystem functions provides new ways to project the response of ecosystems to environmental changes. With the interdisciplinary project RESPECT, we propose a research framework that uses a trait-based response-effect-framework (REF) to quantify relationships between abiotic conditions, the diversity of functional traits in communities, and associated biotic processes, informing a biodiversity-LSM. We apply the framework to a megadiverse tropical mountain forest. We use a plot design along an elevation and a land-use gradient to collect data on abiotic drivers, functional traits, and biotic processes. We integrate these data to build the biodiversity-LSM and illustrate how to test the model. REF results show that aboveground biomass production is not directly related to changing climatic conditions, but indirectly through associated changes in functional traits. Herbivory is directly related to changing abiotic conditions. The biodiversity-LSM informed by local functional trait and soil data improved the simulation of biomass production substantially. We conclude that local data, also derived from previous projects (platform Ecuador), are key elements of the research framework. We specify essential datasets to apply this framework to other mountain ecosystems.

scholarly journals Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (36) ◽  
pp. 9575-9580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sanderman ◽  
Tomislav Hengl ◽  
Gregory J. Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Carbon Balance ◽  
Mitigation Strategy ◽  
Global Environment ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Grazing Land ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Land Use ◽  
History Database ◽  
Global Carbon

Human appropriation of land for agriculture has greatly altered the terrestrial carbon balance, creating a large but uncertain carbon debt in soils. Estimating the size and spatial distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) loss due to land use and land cover change has been difficult but is a critical step in understanding whether SOC sequestration can be an effective climate mitigation strategy. In this study, a machine learning-based model was fitted using a global compilation of SOC data and the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE) land use data in combination with climatic, landform and lithology covariates. Model results compared favorably with a global compilation of paired plot studies. Projection of this model onto a world without agriculture indicated a global carbon debt due to agriculture of 133 Pg C for the top 2 m of soil, with the rate of loss increasing dramatically in the past 200 years. The HYDE classes “grazing” and “cropland” contributed nearly equally to the loss of SOC. There were higher percent SOC losses on cropland but since more than twice as much land is grazed, slightly higher total losses were found from grazing land. Important spatial patterns of SOC loss were found: Hotspots of SOC loss coincided with some major cropping regions as well as semiarid grazing regions, while other major agricultural zones showed small losses and even net gains in SOC. This analysis has demonstrated that there are identifiable regions which can be targeted for SOC restoration efforts.

Advances in Understanding Landscape Influences on Freshwater Habitats and Biological Assemblages

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Stream Ecosystems ◽  
Human Land Use ◽  
Natural Land ◽  
Stream Biota ◽  
Land Use And Cover

<i>Abstract.</i>—Surrounding land use and cover can have profound effects on the physical, chemical, and biological properties of stream ecosystems. For this reason, changes in land use and cover throughout catchments often have strong effects on stream ecosystems that are particularly interesting to researchers. Additionally, natural physical and climatic, or physiographic, characteristics are important for determining natural land cover and constraining human land use and are also strongly related to stream habitat and biota. Because the physiographic template differs among catchments and is an important mediator of catchment processes, it is important to account for natural physiographic differences among catchments to understand the relationship between land use/cover and stream biota. In this paper, we develop and assess the usefulness of a regional framework, land use/cover distinguished physiographic regions (LDPRs), which is designed for understanding relationships between land use/cover and stream biota while accounting for the physiographic template. We classified hydrologic units into LDPRs based on physiographic predictors of land use and cover for the eastern and western United States through the use of multivariate regression tree analysis. Next, we used case study data to assess the usefulness of LDPRs by determining if the relationships between fish assemblage function and land use/cover varied among classes using hierarchical logistic regression models. Eight physiographic characteristics determined land cover patterns for both the eastern and western United States and were used to classify hydrologic units into LDPR classes. Five commonly used biotic metrics describing trophic, reproductive, and taxonomic groupings of fish species responded in varying ways to agriculture and urban land use across LDPRs in the upper Mississippi River basin. Our findings suggest that physiographic differences among hydrologic units result in different pathways by which land use and cover affects stream fish assemblages and that LDPRs are useful for stratifying hydrologic units to investigate those different processes. Unlike other commonly used regional frameworks, the rationale and methods used to develop LDPRs properly account for the often-confounded relationship between physiography and land use/cover when relating land cover to stream biota. Therefore, we recommend the use and refinement of LDPRs or similarly developed regional frameworks so that the varying processes by which human land use results in stream degradation can be better understood.

scholarly journals Dynamics of forage and land cover changes in Teltele district of Borana rangelands, southern Ethiopia: using geospatial and field survey data

BMC Ecology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeneayehu Fenetahun ◽  
Wang Yong-dong ◽  
Yuan You ◽  
Xu Xinwen
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Biomass Production ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Southern Ethiopia ◽  
Forest Land ◽  
Lulc Change ◽  
Grass Land ◽  
Land Use Types ◽  
Bare Land

Abstract Background The gradual conversion of rangelands into other land use types is one of the main challenges affecting the sustainable management of rangelands in Teltele. This study aimed to examine the changes, drivers, trends in land use and land cover (LULC), to determine the link between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and forage biomass and the associated impacts of forage biomass production dynamics on the Teltele rangelands in Southern Ethiopia. A Combination of remote sensing data, field interviews, discussion and observations data were used to examine the dynamics of LULC between 1992 and 2019 and forage biomass production. Results The result indicate that there is a marked increase in farm land (35.3%), bare land (13.8%) and shrub land (4.8%), while the reduction found in grass land (54.5%), wet land (69.3%) and forest land (10.5%). The larger change in land observed in both grassland and wetland part was observed during the period from 1995–2000 and 2015–2019, this is due to climate change impact (El-Niño) happened in Teltele rangeland during the year 1999 and 2016 respectively. The quantity of forage in different land use/cover types, grass land had the highest average amount of forage biomass of 2092.3 kg/ha, followed by wetland with 1231 kg/ha, forest land with 1191.3 kg/ha, shrub land with 180 kg/ha, agricultural land with 139.5 kg/ha and bare land with 58.1 kg/ha. Conclusions The significant linkage observed between NDVI and LULC change types (when a high NDVI value, the LULC changes also shows positive value or an increasing trend). In addition, NDVI value directly related to the greenness status of vegetation occurred on each LULC change types and its value directly linkage forage biomass production pattern with grassland land use types. 64.8% (grass land), 43.3% (agricultural land), 75.1% (forest land), 50.6% (shrub land), 80.5% (bare land) and 75.5% (wet land) more or higher dry biomass production in the wet season compared to the dry season.

Environmental change and human land‐use over the past 200 years in the Great Hinggan Mountains, Northeastern China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia L. Mackenzie ◽  
Kunshan Bao ◽  
Steve Pratte ◽  
Anna‐Marie Klamt ◽  
Rongqin Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Northeastern China ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Land Use
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