ABSTRACT
Land use is the interaction between humans and the biophysical environment with cumulative impacts on the structure, function, and dynamics of ecosystems at the local, regional, and global levels of ecological organization.1 Human impacts on the Earth’s environment are leaving an increasing ecological footprint, which now threatens many global ecosystems.2,3 Human activities that produce changes in land cover, such as agriculture, mining, and urban development, are a major cause of the ecological footprint. Over the past century, the global human population has increased 3.5 times, while the area of agricultural land has doubled.4 From 1980 the tropics have experienced higher deforestation than temperate regions, with the
largest concentration in the Amazon Basin.5 Changes in land cover such as deforestation affect the functioning of ecological systems at multiple scales, with consequences ranging from global climate change, soil and hydrological degradation, to increased biological extinctions.6,7,8,9,10 Human pressures on the environment are expected to increase, at least in the near future, as a result of the expanding global population and increasing levels of consumption and waste accumulation.3 Although the stakes are high, knowledge of the processes that underlie human-induced land cover change is still limited.7 This is an emerging issue in spatially explicit environmental disciplines such as landscape ecology.11,12
The proximate causes of human-induced changes in land cover arise from both broad-scale clearing of natural vegetation for agriculture, mining and urban development, and from habitat modifications resulting from forestry and altered grazing and fire regimes. However, the ultimate causes are the biophysical and cultural factors that influence where and at what pace habitat clearing and modification occurs, fueled by the global population growth and the consumption of resources.7 To reduce the human ecological footprint and encourage sustainable land use, we need to understand these ultimate causes.
