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 current geographic focus of the research group are the countries of the former Soviet Union, China, and Southeast Asia.
News
04 September 2020
New paper (OA) published in Agriculture Systems
We examine the historical legacy of the Soviet Union on the current rate of human-induced soil erosion using a spatial regression discontinuity design. We find that soil erosion in countries that were part of the former Soviet Union is 26% lower than...
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...