Welcome to the IAMO Land Systems Group
The overall goal of the Land Systems Group is to advance the understanding of terrestrial social-ecological systems where humans interact with the environment through land use. We analyze the multiple repercussions of the changes in land use on human welfare, food production, carbon dynamics, and biodiversity, as well as the effects of socioecological changes on land use. We approach these issues through quantitative and qualitative assessments alike and combine approaches from social and natural sciences at different spatial scales.
Specifically, we work with spatially explicit methods that include econometric modeling, quantitative geography, crop growth modeling, remote sensing, data mining, and simulation modeling. The geographic focus of the research group is the countries of the European Union, West Balkan, former Soviet Union, and China.
News
24 July 2020
New paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability
In this paper, we use participatory, multi-criteria decision making to build a sustainability index to assess the sustainability of the farming system in the Argentine Chaco. Our results suggest that almost all 185 farms assessed in the four target…
04 June 2020
New study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B
The new study 'Cold War spy satellite images reveal long-term declines of a philopatric keystone species in response to cropland expansion' from a research team led by Land Systems Group alumna Dr. Catalina Munteanu and co-authored by Land Systems…
13 May 2020
New paper published in Environmental Science & Policy
New paper: 'From global drivers to local land-use change: understanding the northern Laos rubber boom' shows how price signals transmitted through social networks affected the rubber expansion. Co-authored by Dr. Zhanli Sun from the Land Systems Group.