ABSTRACT
The LUCC Programme, or Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Programme, was established in 1996 to promote land-use/cover change research that could lead to improvement of regional to global-level understanding in a broad environmental context (Turner II et al., 1995). The International Geographical Union (IGU) established a Study Group (a Commission since 2002) on land-use/cover change in the same year to support the new program. It considered that concrete local to regional studies, particularly those incorporating human dimensions, were of particular importance for global understanding under rapid and diverse global changes of both environmental and socioeconomic impact. At the same time, IGU-LUCC recognized that one of the primary tasks of the Commission was to apply geographers' knowledge and skills learned mainly through local to regional studies of land use and other geographical objects to improvement of understanding in land-use/cover changes in larger regions, ultimately in the world, which would lead to an understanding of global significance and to contribute to global environmental issues related to land-use/cover changes. The commitment of IGU-LUCC to this task was demonstrated in the choice of the main theme of its open conference in Prague in 2001, namely 'Land-use/land-cover changes in the period of globalization', and that in Moscow in 2003, namely 'Global and regional land-use/cover
C H A P T E R
changes'. Globalization of land-use/cover change studies faces various challenges. The state, significance, and prospects of such challenges are discussed here and some important lessons learned through the activities of IGU-LUCC presented.
