Land Systems Science Symposium at AAG 2017

Call for Submissions: Land Systems Science Symposium: AAG 2017, Boston USA

The Land Systems Science Symposium at American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual meeting in Boston will focus on advances in research on land systems and land systems change, focusing particularly on geographic perspectives.  The scope and contribution of land systems science and land change science have grown rapidly in the last few years, in basic and strategic research as well as in management and policy at local, regional, national and international scales.  Land systems science also provides insights into human-environment interactions and sustainability.

The symposium will concentrate on advances in our understanding of the nature, dynamics and changes in land systems as coupled human and environmental systems. This includes:

• Land system responses to driving factors related to globalization, including global trade, migration, demographic change, environmental changes, biodiversity losses, telecoupling
• The nature and rates of land use and cover change, and associated impacts
• Relationships between land systems, land management, and socio-ecological resilience
• The role and potential of land systems science as an integral part of sustainability science, and contributions to addressing food, water, energy and environmental security
• Intersections of Land Change Science, Political Ecology, Historical Geography, and other related fields surrounding land use and livelihoods
• Methodological developments in description of land systems and in the measurement and monitoring of changes
• Indigenous perspectives on land, resource management, and sustainability
• Uses of advanced GIS/remote sensing and modelling technologies
• The increased availability of datasets (including Citizen Science), and increasing capability for modelling and analysis of change, that offer new insights into land systems and the nature of change
• Sustainable land systems and landscapes, including analysis and design.

The symposium will be made up of a series of paper and panel sessions.  Geographers and others with active research expertise and interests in land systems science, land change, and land systems as coupled natural and human systems are encouraged to participate. This symposium builds on a long tradition of research in land use and land cover, and of coupled natural and human systems, within Geography, and on previous Land Systems Science Symposiums at AAG in Los Angeles (2013) and Chicago (2015).

Papers addressing the symposium theme and the broad range of topics this includes are encouraged.  Sessions will be compiled from the individually submitted abstracts. Additionally, if you would like to link a full session you are in the process of organizing to the symposium, please contact us in advance.

Submitting papers:

1.    Submit your paper to the AAG Annual meeting website in the AAG format (http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers)

2.    Then forward the Title, Abstract and your participant ID to Richard Aspinall (rjaspinall10@gmail.com) as soon as possible.

Deadline: 27th October 2016.  Note: this is the same deadline as for submission of abstracts to AAG

Organisers: Richard Aspinall (independent), Jane Southworth (University of Florida), Ken Young (University of Texas at Austin), Jacqueline Vadjunec (Oklahoma State University), Burak Guneralp (Texas A&M University), Andrew Millington (Flinders University)

Sponsored by:

Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
Energy and Environment Specialty Group
Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group
Remote Sensing Specialty Group