Global land use changes are four times greater than previously estimated
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UNCCD Library
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article
Quantifying the dynamics of land use change is critical in tackling global societal challengessuch as food security, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Here we analyse the dynamics ofglobal land use change at an unprecedented spatial resolution by combining multiple opendata streams (remote sensing, reconstructions and statistics) to create the HIstoric LandDynamics Assessment+(HILDA+).
We estimate that land use change has affected almosta third (32%) of the global land area in just six decades (1960-2019) and, thus, is around fourtimes greater in extent than previously estimated from long-term land change assessments.
We also identify geographically diverging land use change processes, with afforestation andcropland abandonment in the Global North and deforestation and agricultural expansion inthe South. Here, we show that observed phases of accelerating (~1960–2005) and decelerating (2006–2019) land use change can be explained by the effects of global trade on agricultural production.
About three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface has been altered by humans within the last millennium.
Successfully tackling global sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food security depends on land use change, since it strongly affects carbon sources and sinks, causes habitat loss and underpins food production .
In particular, the mitigation potential of land use activities, including those related to forests and agriculture, has been recognised as essential in meeting climate targets under the Paris Agreement, making land use a central component of many international policy debates.
Therefore, quantifying and understanding global land use change and its spatiotemporal dynamics is critical in supporting these debates.
Spatial extent and diverging patterns of global land use change
# We estimate that 17% of the Earth’s land surface has changed at least once between the six land categories from 1960 to 2019 (see Fig. 1).
# When summing all of the individual change events (including areas of multiple change), the total land change extent is 43 million km², which is almost a third of the global land surface.
# This means that, on average, a land area of about twice the size of Germany (720,000 km²) has changed every year since 1960.
The rate of global land use change was not constant over time. In analysing the temporal dynamics, we identify two different phases:
(1) an acceleration phase with an increasing rate of change from 1960 to 2004; and
(2) a decreasing rate of change from 2005 to 2019 (see Fig. 3).
The transition from constant to rising rates of land use change has been discussed in the context of shifting global food regimes and coincides with a period when global food production changed from agro-technological intensification (driven by the Green Revolution in the 1960s) to the production for globalised markets and increasing trade, especially during the 1990s
We estimate that land use change has affected almosta third (32%) of the global land area in just six decades (1960-2019) and, thus, is around fourtimes greater in extent than previously estimated from long-term land change assessments.
We also identify geographically diverging land use change processes, with afforestation andcropland abandonment in the Global North and deforestation and agricultural expansion inthe South. Here, we show that observed phases of accelerating (~1960–2005) and decelerating (2006–2019) land use change can be explained by the effects of global trade on agricultural production.
About three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface has been altered by humans within the last millennium.
Successfully tackling global sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food security depends on land use change, since it strongly affects carbon sources and sinks, causes habitat loss and underpins food production .
In particular, the mitigation potential of land use activities, including those related to forests and agriculture, has been recognised as essential in meeting climate targets under the Paris Agreement, making land use a central component of many international policy debates.
Therefore, quantifying and understanding global land use change and its spatiotemporal dynamics is critical in supporting these debates.
Spatial extent and diverging patterns of global land use change
# We estimate that 17% of the Earth’s land surface has changed at least once between the six land categories from 1960 to 2019 (see Fig. 1).
# When summing all of the individual change events (including areas of multiple change), the total land change extent is 43 million km², which is almost a third of the global land surface.
# This means that, on average, a land area of about twice the size of Germany (720,000 km²) has changed every year since 1960.
The rate of global land use change was not constant over time. In analysing the temporal dynamics, we identify two different phases:
(1) an acceleration phase with an increasing rate of change from 1960 to 2004; and
(2) a decreasing rate of change from 2005 to 2019 (see Fig. 3).
The transition from constant to rising rates of land use change has been discussed in the context of shifting global food regimes and coincides with a period when global food production changed from agro-technological intensification (driven by the Green Revolution in the 1960s) to the production for globalised markets and increasing trade, especially during the 1990s
Keywords
land-use change
agriculture
facts and figures
intensification
urban land use
cropland
rangelands
grasslands
land cover change
remote sensing
climate change mitigation
statistics
facts and figures
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