Sustainable land management and food security across scales
Rooted in land system science, I assess interactions between natural resources, food security and livelihoods in the context of climate and land use change. Insights support decisions to improve land management and food security at local, regional and global scales. Archetypical patterns of vulnerability and adaptation, critical thresholds and catastrophic shifts in socio-ecological systems receive particular attention. Learning from regional diversity provides knowledge for scaling sustainable land management fostering the achievement of Land Degradation Neutrality and other Sustainable Development Goals. I have worked in Europe, Latin America and Africa, often in drylands and high-mountain regions, in close collaboration with local communities, ministries, development agencies, international agricultural research centres and UN organisations.
I am an Associate Editor at Regional Environmental ChangeJournal.
Themes
Land change trade-offs for ecosystem services and biodiversity , Land management systems
The 4th Research Workshop on Archetypes of Sustainable Development was held fully online from 3-5 February 2021. Responding to the open Call in September, more than 40 participants from 5 continents discussed current research and emerging frontiers of archetype analysis in sustainability research. In addition, a Call for Papers for the workshop's special issue is open until 30 June.
A new paper in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution seeks to synthesize insights into the drivers, processes and management of catastrophic shifts to highlight ways forward for the management of Mediterranean ecosystems.
An article by Diana Sietz and colleagues in Environmental Research Letters shows how the choice of the baseline period as a reference for assessing future changes can dramatically impact the key messages drawn from a basin-scale climate impact study. To address this problem, an algorithm was developed to identify flexible baseline periods for each simulation individually, which better represent the statistical properties of a given historical period.
This Focus Issue of Environmental Research Letters consolidates archetypes of sustainable land use and governance in order to provide a state-of-the-art knowledge resource to transform land use systems towards sustainability across world regions. It will advance knowledge in four thematic priority areas of land use systems: telecoupled land systems; land governance; farming systems; and interactions between land, food, climate and biodiversity. Deadline: 11 December 2020
