How humans use terrestrial land affects the earth and all life forms on it. Biodiversity loss and climate change are consequences of the same inappropriate and careless uses of land that negatively impact ecosystems on a smaller scale.

Land Use, Climate Change and Biodiversity Modeling: Perspectives and Applications combines state-of-the-art modeling approaches at various scales with case studies from across the world. These examples help natural resource managers, scientists, and decision makers overcome their fear of models. The case studies show how to translate models into results and illustrate how pro-active implementation can mitigate biodiversity loss. This material will interest individual researchers, but it is also critical for policy-makers committed to the future of the planet.

Coverage:

The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to:

Climate Change Modeling
Deforestation and Climate Change
Effects of Land Use and Biodiversity
Effects of Land Use on Climate Change
Geoinformatics for Land Use and Biodiversity Studies
Land Degradation
Land Use Informatics and Climate Change
Land Use Modeling
Quantitative Methodologies for Research on Biodiversity, Land Use, and Climate Change
Sustainable Land Use

Reviews & Statements

PBL started to develop modeling tools for national use in 2005, together with a large group of modelers from various regions of world. Modelers from Meso- and South America, from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia and from Eastern and Southern Africa were brought together to actually develop tools to be used in their own countries, based on the principles of models developed at a global level. Aspects of models like IMAGE and GLOBIO and also the land use allocation model CLUE proved to be very useful at (sub-) national levels. This book includes some of these experiences and gives the wider, methodological context of these experiences. I hope that this book may inspire research in many countries to set up science-based policy support even if resources are limited or data are scarce. Biodiversity loss declines too quickly to wait for sufficient data. I appreciate the initiative of (especially) Yongyut Trisurat to assemble all these experiences and join them together with theory and background.

– Professor Maarten Hajer, Director of PBL-The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Netherlands

This book serves as a source of sound information for many practitioners like investors, environmental advocacy groups, forestry professionals and educators, policy-makers, and the general public, which can be used to formulate recommendations for future policies and management strategies needed in support of sustainable development. I would like to congratulate the authors and editors of this book; I know it will be a worthwhile contribution to our society at large.

– Professor Don Koo Lee, Minister of the Korean Forest Service, Korea

Biodiversity loss and climate change are the evident consequences of inappropriate and careless use of land. The case studies used in this resource illustrate how to translate models into results and show how active implementation can reduce that loss of biodiversity. It offers state-of-the-art modeling methods at several scales with those case studies. The examples are intended to help resource managers, scientists, and decision makers understand and work with models. [...] The material will interest researchers, but also would be important reading for policy makers involved in these issues.

– Book News, Reference - Research Book News - August 2011

Table of Contents

Search this Book:

Reset

Editor/Author Biographies

Yongyut Trisurat is an Associate Professor of Forestry at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand. He received PhD in natural resources management and conservation from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand. He was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Geography, Freie University Berlin in 1995, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar affiliated with University of Hawaii and the East-West Center in 2005, and a Visiting Researcher at AIT in 2009. He has been active in the area of protected areas, biodiversity conservation, landscape ecology and GIS for over 15 years and has been a frequent contributor to several international agencies (e.g., ITTO, IUCN, ADB, CIDA, DANCED/DANIDA, WWF). His current research involves biodiversity conservation and climate change. In addition, he has published a number of peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on these subjects.

Rajendra P Shrestha received his PhD in natural resources management and currently is an Associate Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. His areas of research interests include land use and land cover change focusing on land change/degradation-human interface for policy support in the context of climate change. He also has interest in livelihood studies and food security in relation to land use. He has extensively published on these topics in southeast and south Asia. His research collaboration has been with several organizations, FAO, UNDP, UNEP, IUCN, WAC and the universities in the region. Previously, he has worked as lecturer and agriculture officer in Nepal. He was also a Senior Programme Officer at the United Nations Environment Programme, Bangkok, a Visiting Scientist at Nihon University of Japan, and Roskilde University of Denmark.

Rob Alkemade is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). He obtained his PhD at Wageningen University in the role of nematodes in coastal ecosystems. He developed and applied models for assessing the effects of environmental change on biodiversity, first at the National Institute for the Environment and Public Health (RIVM) and later at PBL. He has a wide experience in biodiversity assessment and scenario analysis at the global level and contributed to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Global Environmental Outlooks and Global Biodiversity Outlooks. For this purpose, he developed the GLOBIO3 model. He is a visiting scientist at Wageningen University doing research on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Abstracting & Indexing

Archiving

All of IGI Global's content is archived via the CLOCKSS and LOCKSS initiative. Additionally, all IGI Global published content is available in IGI Global's InfoSci^® platform.

Editorial Advisory Board

Professor Dr. Roger Kjelgren, Utah State University, USA
Professor Dr. Olavi Luukkanen, University of Helsinki, Finland
Professor Dr. Nipon Tangtham, Kasetsart Univrsity, Thailand