Middle-range theories of land system change
Introduction
Change in land use—the purposes and activities through which people interact with land and terrestrial ecosystems— is a key process of global environmental change. Understanding land-use change is central for designing strategies to address sustainability challenges, including climate change, food security, energy transition, and biodiversity loss. Land systems constitute complex, adaptive social-ecological systems (Berkes et al., 1998) shaped by interactions between (i) the different actors and demands that act upon land, (ii) the technologies, institutions, and cultural practices through which societies shape land use, and (iii) feedbacks between land use and environmental dynamics (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), 2003; Verburg et al., 2015). Elementary events of land-use changes that take place at the plot-level over short time periods, such as deforestation or substitution of one crop by another, correspond to changes in the extent and/or intensity of land use. These elementary building blocks combine to form complex, structural processes taking place over broader extents (landscapes, regions, and across countries) and longer time scales, including non-linear transitions (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010) and spatial reorganization of land uses (Rey Benayas et al., 2007; Kastner et al., 2014; Queiroz et al., 2014; Levers et al., 2018).
Land system science is a maturing field that has produced a wealth of methodological innovations and empirical observations (Lambin et al., 2006; Turner et al., 2007; Verburg et al., 2015). It focuses on monitoring and describing patterns of land-cover change, explaining drivers of land-use change, and understanding linkages between these two. These advances have relied on deductive approaches based on disciplinary frameworks (e.g., neo-classical economics or political ecology), abductive reasoning (i.e., starting from outcomes and retracing these to their likely causes), syntheses based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of drivers and impacts of land system change (Magliocca et al., 2015, van Vliet et al., 2016), and “box and arrows” conceptual frameworks. The development of land system theories has been lagging due to: (i) a focus on local case studies, favoring ad hoc interpretations based on contingent factors; (ii) an emphasis on methodological developments involving improvements in remote sensing and other geospatial analyses; and (iii) the interdisciplinary nature of land system science, which has led to the borrowing of theories from related disciplines including geography, landscape ecology, economics, and anthropology (Meyfroidt, 2015, 2016).
Lambin et al. (2001) challenged simplistic notions about the causes of land-use and land-cover change, highlighting complex interactions, multi-causality, and the contextual character of land system processes. Here, we argue that land system dynamics can be apprehended through theoretical generalizations that transcend the place-based specificity of cases, without ignoring their complexity. We consider that theoretical formalization can further the development of: (i) testable hypotheses; (ii) process-based models simulating complex interactions; and (iii) credible knowledge that informs policy and decision-making beyond specific places while remaining sensitive to context. Theories of land systems advance our understanding of the dynamics of social-ecological systems and foster dialogue with other human-environmental sciences.
Here, we take stock of land system science knowledge generated over the last decades, focusing on theories explaining the causes of land-use change and their systemic linkages across places. We focus on middle-range theories, defined as contextual generalizations presenting causal explanations of delimited aspects of reality—events or phenomena (Merton, 1968, full definition in Section 2). This stands in contrast to both high-level, unified theories, as well as explanations relying on the singularity of a specific case. While our focus is not on theories relating land-use change to its environmental and human impacts, we account for feedback mechanisms that alter the dynamics of land use. We thus only touch lightly on the normative aspects of land system change. We concentrate on processes in agriculture and forestry, but many theories discussed here have been used for other dynamics, such as urban land uses.
Our objective is to articulate how middle-range theories can contribute to understanding land system change by:
- (i)
Reviewing the different theories explaining changes in land-use extent and intensity, and
- (ii)
Synthesizing them into middle-range theories of higher-level processes of land system changes, focusing on land-use spillovers and land-use transitions as non-linear, structural changes.
Section 2 discusses the role of middle-range theories in relation to frameworks, models, and typologies. Section 3 reviews theories of land-use expansion and intensification. Sections 4 and 5 build on these theories to synthesize middle-range theories on structural changes in land systems. We then discuss further theory development on land systems as social-ecological systems.
Section snippets
Theories, frameworks, models, and typologies
Different epistemologies have distinct visions of what a “theory” is. Here, a theory is defined as a general explanation or stylized facts about events, phenomena, or their attributes (e.g., spatial or temporal patterns), based on a set of factors and their causal relations. The term “middle-range theory”, originating from social sciences, describes a process developing from observations and analyses of a specific event or phenomenon, building towards explanations of sets of similar phenomena,
Land-use expansion and intensification
The increasing global demands that human societies place on land, including for production of goods, nature protection, and ecosystem services, require changes in extent (expansion or contraction) and intensity (intensification or disintensification1
Theories of land-use spillovers
We here propose middle-range theories of complex land system processes, such as land-use spillovers and displacement, combining several of the theories discussed above. Land-use displacement refers to the separation between places of production and consumption, but has been used in a broader sense to refer to geographic shifts of land use from one place to another (Meyfroidt et al., 2013). Land-use spillovers, which can explain some forms of displacement, refer to situations where land-use
Theories of land-use transitions
Changes in land-use extent and intensity interact to produce non-linear trajectories of land systems. Rapid, non-linear changes in land resource uses are driven by positive feedbacks, where initial interventions or disturbances precipitate a cascade of further changes (Peters et al., 2004; Ramankutty and Coomes, 2016). These dynamics produce land-use transitions, which are structural transformations of land systems from one dynamic equilibrium to another (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010; Müller et
Directions for further theory development
Middle-range theories of land system change can be formulated to synthesize key processes of land-use change and the conditions under which these processes manifest. Such middle-range theories provide a constructive path towards more generalized knowledge of human-environment systems (Magliocca et al., 2018). These theories remain to be further tested and refined, particularly regarding the conditions leading to different pathways. Several emerging trends in land systems require further
Conclusion
A major challenge in land system theories is that land is simultaneously a biophysical entity, a territory, a commodity, a habitat for nonhuman species, a resource for productive activities, and a buffer for absorbing pollutants. It is allocated, regulated, and administrated by various laws, norms, and rules. It is also a source of meaning and sense of place, a landscape component, and symbolically loaded. Theories of the causes of land system changes cross theoretically and epistemologically
Acknowledgments
This work has received support from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP); the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 677140 MIDLAND https://erc-midland.earth; 311819 GLOLAND; 682472 MUSES; 758014 SCALAR); the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN) actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 765408 COUPLED); The
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