Socio-economic analysis on land-use change studies

Abstract

Understanding the dynamics of land use change is a scientific challenge of considerable importance to humanity. The demands for improved knowledge of environmental processes and the impacts of policy on their dynamics must increase, as population pressures on food supplies and natural resources mount and the publicly held perception of preserving environmental diversity and amenity strengthens. Some of the most profound changes in the landscape have arisen from direct decisions by man concerning land use, and these have affected both the quality of environmental resources, such as soils and water, and the sustainability of food production. Land use decisions are based on opportunities and constraints affected by both biophysical and socio-economic drivers. Predicting future land use change requires methodologies that integrate understanding of the processes affected by these drivers. Because the dynamics of land use and land cover can have biophysical, social, economic or ecological drivers, we must use an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the different problems. Nevertheless the work departs from the disciplinary perspective of traditional land use studies it must maintain the specificity of each science.