title: Meta-studies in land use science: Current coverage and prospects.
abstract: Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesize deforestation and agricultural land use change processes, while other important changes, such as urbanization, wetland conversion, and grassland dynamics have hardly been addressed. Meta-studies of land use change impacts focus mostly on biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles, while meta-studies of socioeconomic consequences are rare. Land use change processes and land use change impacts are generally addressed in isolation, while only few studies considered trajectories of drivers through changes to their impacts and their potential feedbacks. We provide a conceptual framework for linking meta-studies of land use change processes and impacts for the analysis of coupled human-environmental systems. Moreover, we provide suggestions for combining meta-studies of different land use change processes to develop a more integrated theory of land use change, and for combining meta-studies of land use change impacts to identify tradeoffs between different impacts. Land use science can benefit from an improved conceptualization of land use change processes and their impacts, and from new methods that combine meta-study findings to advance our understanding of human-environmental systems.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Geography Group, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelenlaan 1087, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Jasper.van.vliet@vu.nl.
authors.forename: Jasper
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Vliet
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland at Baltimore County, 211 Sondheim Hall, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD, 21250, USA. nmagliocca@sesync.org.|National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, 1 Park Place, Suite 300, Annapolis, MD, USA. nmagliocca@sesync.org.
authors.forename: Nicholas R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Magliocca
authors.affiliation: Environmental Geography Group, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelenlaan 1087, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. b.buchner@vu.nl.
authors.forename: Bianka
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Büchner
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA. elizabeth.m.cook@gmail.com.|Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Avenida Rector Eduardo Morales Miranda, Edificio Pugín, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile. elizabeth.m.cook@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, University of Alcalá, 28805, Alcalá de Henares, Spain. josem.rey@uah.es.
authors.forename: José M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Rey Benayas
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland at Baltimore County, 211 Sondheim Hall, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD, 21250, USA. ece@umbc.edu.
authors.forename: Erle C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.affiliation: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. andreas.heinimann@cde.unibe.ch.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Heinimann
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. ekeys@wpi.edu.|Department of Social Science and Policy Studies, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 01609, USA. ekeys@wpi.edu.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Keys
authors.affiliation: Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA. tienl@princeton.edu.
authors.forename: Tien Ming
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, 115 Manly Miles Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA. liuji@msu.edu.
authors.forename: Jianguo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 10, 1350, Copenhagen K, Denmark. om@ign.ku.dk.
authors.forename: Ole
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mertz
authors.affiliation: F.R.S.-FNRS & Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place Pasteur 3, bte L4.03.08, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. patrick.meyfroidt@uclouvain.be.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Meyfroidt
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology and Environmental Science Graduate Program, The Ohio State University, 174 W. 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA. moritz.42@osu.edu.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moritz
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Ulls Väg 16, Box 7044, Uppsala, Sweden. christopher.poeplau@slu.se.|Thuenen Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture, Braunschweig, Germany. christopher.poeplau@slu.se.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Poeplau
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street W, Montreal, QC, H3A 0B9, Canada. brian.e.robinson@mcgill.ca.
authors.forename: Brian E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, UFZ - Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research, Permoserstraße 15, 04318, Leipzig, Germany. ralf.seppelt@ufz.de.
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Seppelt
authors.affiliation: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, 195 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA. karen.seto@yale.edu.
authors.forename: Karen C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Seto
authors.affiliation: Environmental Geography Group, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelenlaan 1087, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. peter.verburg@vu.nl.
authors.forename: Peter H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Verburg
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D044822:Biodiversity; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D006801:Humans; D014507:Urbanization; D053833:Wetlands
keywords: Drivers; Human–environmental systems; Impacts; Land use change; Meta-analysis; Systematic review