Submissions for Land Systems Science Symposium at AAG 2019

Building on previous Land Systems Science Symposiums at AAG meetings in Los Angeles (2013), Chicago (2015), and Boston (2017), the 2019 Land Systems Science Symposium in Washington, DC 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, rates, and patterns of land-use and land-cover change, and associated impacts on land and water;
• 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;
• Land systems science at the interface of normative and policy concerns - insights, contributions and continuing gaps;
• 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 comprised 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 on coupled natural and human systems, within Geography and other related disciplines.  

Papers addressing the symposium theme and the broad range of topics this includes are encouraged, as are ideas for panel sessions. Paper and panel 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.

Organizers: Burak Güneralp (Texas A&M University), Richard Aspinall (Independent), Jacqueline Vadjunec (Oklahoma State University), Darla Munroe (Ohio State University), Rinku Roy Chowdhury (Clark University), Hannah Gosnell (Oregon State University)

Sponsored by the following Specialty Groups: Cultural and Political Ecology, Geographic Information Science and Systems, Geographies of Food and Agriculture, Human Dimensions of Global Change, Remote Sensing, Rural Geography, Spatial Analysis and Modeling, Urban Geography

To participate:

Please load your title and abstract, conforming to AAG annual meeting guidelines, to the AAG conference website (http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers) and then forward the title and abstract for your paper and your PIN, to Burak Güneralp (bguneralp@tamu.edu), Jackie Vadjunec (jacqueline.vadjunec@okstate.edu), and Hannah Gosnell (gosnellh@geo.oregonstate.edu) by the Symposium deadline of October 19. Please note that this is before the AAG deadline. Please indicate which of the symposium themes your paper is most suited to. If you are interested in serving on a panel, let us know by the same deadline. We will get back to you by October 22 with more information.