Semiarid regions are often secondary on the national to global (scientific) agenda, especially if abundant vegetation elsewhere draws attention and the local population is considered backwards thinking and poverty-stricken. The Caatinga, our case study, is such a region, home to millions of Brazilians and a vast biodiversity. Unfortunately, a widely uncoordinated land use change and biodiversity decline are happening, while farmers’ livelihoods are at risk. We hypothesize substantial weaknesses in the current governance practices.

Urbanization and climate changes have direct impacts on ecosystems and the services they provide to society, thus influencing human well-being and health. Urban sprawl may conflict with ecosystem services, e.g. enhancing water-related stresses and risks of, e.g., droughts and floods, with significant economic, environmental and societal impacts. Such hydro-climatic extremes and their societal impacts are evident around the world. East Africa is a region with highly vulnerable populations to frequent floods and droughts.

Land use change results from the interaction between the human and the natural system and therefore various scientific disciplines have developed paradigms and methods to study land use change. However, these disciplinary approaches can only cover part of the complex system of land use change. The objective of this dissertation is to develop interdisciplinary methodologies to identify and integrate factors that are important in the land use system to describe and model the land use system in a comprehensive manner.

As a result of high-density urbanization and climate change, both the frequency and intensity of extreme urban rainfall are increasing. Drainage systems are not designed to cope with this increase, and as a result, floods are becoming more common in cities, particularly in the rapidly growing cities of China. To better cope with more frequent and severe urban flooding and to improve the water quality of stormwater runoff, the Chinese government launched the national Sponge City Construction (SCC) program in 2014.

Sustainable economic development is essential for hundreds of millions of poor households in rural areas. This book represents a merger of environmental science and rural development economics. It elucidates the linkage between rational choice theory and theories on land use change. It builds a quantitative framework to connect the environmental method of Material Flow Analysis to basic issues of rural development such as agricultural intensification and food security.

Biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems - rivers, lakes and wetlands - is undergoing rapid global decline. Major drivers are land use change, eutrophication, hydrological disturbance, climate change, overexploitation and invasive species. We developed a global model for assessing the dominant human impacts on inland aquatic biodiversity. The system consists of a biodiversity model, named GLOBIO-Aquatic, that is embedded in the IMAGE model framework, i.e.

Riverine nitrogen (N) export is a crucial process that links upstream and downstream ecosystems and coastal zones. However, the driving forces of riverine N export that is closely related to water N pollution are still not well understood. In this study, we used a mass balance approach to quantify the sources of N discharge and analyzed the effect of land use composition on riverine N export, taking Zhejiang Province, China as a case study. We found that the total reactive N discharge to rivers in Zhejiang increased from 0.22 to 0.26 Tg yr-1 from 2000 to 2015.

Abstract Biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems – rivers, lakes and wetlands – is undergoing rapid global decline. Major drivers are land use change, eutrophication, hydrological disturbance, climate change, overexploitation and invasive species. We developed a global model for assessing the dominant human impacts on inland aquatic biodiversity. The system consists of a biodiversity model, named GLOBIO-Aquatic, that is embedded in the IMAGE model framework, i.e.

Few longitudinal studies link agricultural biodiversity, land use and food access in rural landscapes. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that, in a context of economic change, cash crop expansion is associated with deforestation, reduced agrobiodiversity and changes in food access. For this purpose, we analysed data collected from the same 53 upland and floodplain mestizo households in Ucayali, Peru, in 2000 and 2015. We found an emerging transition towards less diversified food access coupled with loss of forest cover and reduced agricultural biodiversity.