Land Cover and Land Use Change

Land Cover and Land Use Change (LCLUC) is an important thematic area of research within the Nature-Society Studies group at Michigan State University. Faculty and students conducting LCLUC research have addressed tropical deforestation, desertification, and urban sprawl, in settings as varied as the Amazon basin and the Detroit metropolitan area. The underlying motivation for such research is the LCLUC is a fundamental driver of environmental change, both globally and locally. MSU researchers have focused much of their attention on attempting to understand the human drivers of LCLUC, given policy must ultimately be based on insight into the motivations of human behavior. LCLUC research conducted by faculty in the Nature-Society Studies group at MSU is at the disciplinary forefront of combining geospatial technologies, including remote sensing, with field methods. Associated faculty have promulgated their findings in leading geography journals, and have been successful in the pursuit of external funding from the National Science Foundations, NASA, and National Geographic Society.

Cultural and Anthropogenic Landscapes

Research in this sub-field is concerned with how past and present landscape transformations by people express their ideals and how perceptions of landscape are incorporated into all aspects of life from ecologies to identity politics, and how meanings and values of landscapes change with shifting social priorities. Examples of this area of research at MSU include studies of the importance of homegardens to livelihoods in the Brazilian Amazon; environmental knowledge systems, especially of soils and agriculture; social capital and sustainability in Michigan; symbolic landscapes as constructed amid processes of nation-building and globalization; landscape perceptions/ representations as associated with political and economic processes; and society-environment discourses related to conservation and development. Faculty in this area have published their findings in leading geography and area studies journals, and have been successful in the pursuit of external funding from the National Science Foundations, the American Philosophical Society, and others.

Agrarian Reform, Resource Conflict, and Geographies of Resistance

Issues surrounding agrarian reform, resource conflict, and geographies of resistance have become important foci of research within the Nature-Society Studies group at Michigan State University. Essential to this broadly defined research area is an understanding of how endogenous and exogenous historical socio-economic and political processes interact creating contested landscapes that define place, and how place, in turn, engenders contention, influences community identity, structures power relations, and elaborates geographies of resistance. A few examples of current research in this area include examinations of the socio-spatial and environmental impacts of direct action land reform in the Brazilian Amazon; the structure of power relations in the struggle for land and the strategic repertoire of actors; and the contested nature of claims-making and claims-taking in the struggle for oil in the Middle East. Faculty in this area have published their work in the flagship geography journals, as well as leading development and area studies journals, and have received external support for their research from the National Science Foundation.

For more information about ongoing research, please visit the DALR Project web page at: http://www.msu.edu/~simmo108/dalr/.

Climate-Land Interactions

An important unanswered question in human-environment research is, what is the impact of human's use of the land on the local and regional climate? Land use conversions such as deforestation and expansion of agriculture alter soil moisture, surface reflectance and other land conditions that greatly affect local and regional climates. Similarly, changes in the local climate, such as rising temperatures and rainfall variability, can be expected to impact agriculture, forestry and other land uses, leading to alterations in land use patterns. These processes are behind the question being addressed by the Climate-Land Interaction Project (CLIP) at Michigan State University, Purdue University, NOAA, the University of East Anglia, the International Livestock Research Institute and other collaborating institutions in East Africa: What is the magnitude and nature of the interaction between land use and climate change at regional and local scales?

For more information about the CLIP Project please visit: http://clip.msu.edu/