The global food market makes international players intrinsically connected through the flow of commodities, demand, production, and consumption. Local decisions, such as new economic policies or dietary shifts, can foster changes in coupled human–natural systems across long distances. Understanding the causes and effects of these changes is essential for agricultural-export countries, such as Brazil. Since 2000, Brazil has led the expansion of soybean planted area—19 million hectares, or 47.5% of the world’s increase. Soybean is among the major crop commodities traded globally.

Many developing countries have witnessed the urgent need of accelerating cadastral surveying processes. Previous studies found that large portions of cadastral boundaries coincide with visible physical objects, namely roads, fences, and building walls. This research explores the application of airborne laser scanning (ALS) techniques on cadastral surveys. A semi-automated workflow is developed to extract cadastral boundaries from an ALS point clouds. Firstly, a two-phased workflow was developed that focused on extracting digital representations of physical objects.

Urban residents’ health depends on green infrastructure to cope with climate change. Shrinking cities could utilize vacant land to provide more green space, but declining tax revenues preclude new park development—a situation pronounced in Japan, where some cities are projected to shrink by over ten percent, but lack green space. Could informal urban green spaces (IGS; vacant lots, street verges, brownfields etc.) supplement parks in shrinking cities?