Land use and land cover change is a critical factor of ecosystem services, while water yield plays a vital role in sustainable development. The impact of urban expansion on water yield has long been discussed, but water yield change resulting from cropland protection is seldom concerned. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of cropland protection on water yield by comparing the water yield in two cropland protection scenarios (i.e., Strict Cropland Protection scenario and No Cropland Protection scenario).

Understanding of cropland dynamics in a large geographical extent is mostly based on observations of area change, while the changes in landscape pattern are hardly assessed. The total amount of cropland in China has remained relatively stable in recent years, which might suggest there was little change. In this analysis, we combine the number of cropland patches (NP) with the total cropland area (TA) for a more comprehensive characterization of cropland change in China.

Low-meat and no-meat diets are increasingly acknowledged as sustainable alternatives to current Western food consumption patterns. Concerns for the environment, individual health or animal welfare are raising consumers’ willingness to adopt such diets. Dietary shifts in Western countries may modify the way human-environment systems interact over distances, primarily as a result of existing trade flows in food products.

A wide variety of settlement systems exist, ranging from small villages to large metropolises. However, spatial analyses are typically confined to the mere presence or absence of built-up land and the changes therein, while more subtle differences between various settlement systems are ignored. In this paper we study the spatial distribution of Chinese settlements in terms of their built-up land, cluster density and cluster size, as well as their changes between 1990 and 2010.

Farmers in Ethiopia are elementary for the implementation of land use policies. However, in order to effectively implement these policies, they need to be aware of them, and accept them accordingly. In this study we assess to what extent farmers in the Central Rift Valley are aware of prevailing land use policies in their area, to what extent they participated in the development of these policies, and how they perceive the impacts of these policies, using interviews with local farmers as well as stakeholders from governmental institutions at various levels.

A data-based method to distinguish climate and land use change impacts on streamflow has been previously developed and needs further evaluation through a large sample study. This study aims to apply the method to a large sample set of 472 catchments in the United States and Australia. The method calculates the water and energy budget of a catchment which can be translated to climate and land use induced changes in streamflow between two periods: a pre-change and post-change period.

Changes in the amount and location of cropland areas may affect the potential crop production at different spatial scales. However, most studies ignore the impacts of cropland displacement on potential crop production. In many countries, cropland protection policies mainly aim for no loss in cropland area, while there is no restriction on change of cropland location. Taking China as the study area, we analyze the impacts of cropland displacement on potential crop production at four administrative levels during the period 2000 and 2018.

Urbanization has been responsible for the loss of cropland worldwide, especially in China. To guarantee national food security, China has implemented a series of policies to protect cropland. One of these policies requires that one-hectare cropland should be reclaimed when urban expansion occupies one-hectare cropland. Since most cropland reclamation leads to a conversion of natural habitat, such as wetland and grassland, urban expansion may lead to (indirect) natural habitat loss in addition to direct loss from conversion of into urban area.

Deforestation and drought are among the greatest environmental pressures on the Amazon rainforest, possibly destabilizing the forest-climate system. Deforestation in the Amazon reduces rainfall regionally, while this deforestation itself has been reported to be facilitated by droughts. Here we quantify the interactions between drought and deforestation spatially across the Amazon during the early 21st century.

As the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector has begun to manifest itself in its severity, adaptation planning has come under scrutiny for favoring the preservation of status-quo conditions over more substantial changes. The uptake of transformational adaptations, involving a significant re-structuring of the agricultural system, is however hindered by a lack of assessment tools capable of quantifying the effects of these often more complex, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes.

Agricultural large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) is a process that is currently not captured by land change models. We present a novel land change modeling approach that includes processes governing LSLAs and simulates their interactions with other land systems. LSLAs differ from other land change processes in two ways: (1) their changes affect hundreds to thousands of contiguous hectares at a time, far surpassing other land change processes, e.g., smallholder agriculture, and (2) as policymakers value LSLA as desirable or undesirable, their agency significantly affects LSLA occurrence.

Countries in Southeast Asia have been developing quickly from a predominantly rural to predominantly urban society, leading to a rapid increase in urban land. This increase in urban land has mainly occurred in river deltas and floodplains, exposing humans and human assets to flood hazard. Here we present an assessment of current and future flood risk in five countries of mainland Southeast Asia, using a new modeling approach that accounts for differences in urban land systems.