MIDLAND

The project MIDLAND - Developing middle-range theories linking land use displacement, intensification and transitions - was funded as a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant under Grant Agreement N°677140: http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/203217_en.html , over 2016-2022.

Project summary:

Proposal

Land is a nexus for crucial societal and environmental challenges including food security, access to water, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Development of solutions to balance these tradeoffs and synergies is currently hindered by the lack of theories explaining the conditions under which different pathways of land change occur and lead to different outcomes, integrating human and environmental aspects. The project developed and tested integrated middle-range theories explaining the linkages between three of the major processes in land systems, i.e., (i) land use intensification and expansion, (ii) land use displacement and trade, and (iii) land use transitions or regime shifts. The work focused on the emerging agricultural frontier of Southern African dry forests and savannas, which is a threatened and understudied region, and its linkages with distant places. The work is starting in Mozambique, in particular the northern provinces of Nampula, Niassa, Zambezia and Cabo Delgado. The project is built in four steps, analyzing:

(i) The strategic field of actors’ coalitions, institutions and distant linkages in emerging frontiers; (ii) Links between land use displacement, leakage, and local land changes; (iii) Pathways of agricultural expansion and intensification in tropical landscapes; and (iv) The conditions for transformative governance of land systems to foster resilient landscapes that sustain ecosystem services and livelihoods

Our main outputs in this project were:

Datasets:

A map of active cropland and short-term fallows across Northern Mozambique for 2020/2021 derived from PlanetScope data from Rufin et al. (2022) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6907606

Northern Mozambique land use classifications for 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2017 from Bey and Meyfroidt (2021) https://code.earthengine.google.com/fc89d25b9e939c37a6eb93fd5aec6919

Scientific papers:

(* : Project member when the research was done)

Main syntheses and theoretically-oriented works on land systems, frontiers and sustainability

Meyfroidt*, P., Abeygunawardane*, D., Baumann, M., Bey*, A., Buchadas*, A., Chiarella*, C., Junquera, V., Kronenburg García*, A., Kuemmerle, T., le Polain de Waroux, Y., Oliveira*, E., Picoli*, M., Qin*, S., Rodríguez García*, V., Rufin*, P. (2024). Explaining the emergence of land-use frontiers. Royal Society Open Science, 11(7), 240295. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240295

Meyfroidt* P., de Bremond A., Ryan C. M., Archer E., Aspinall R., Chhabra A., Camara G., Corbera E., DeFries R., Díaz S., Dong J., Ellis E. C., Erb K.-H., Fisher J. A., Garrett R. D., Golubiewski N. E., Grau H. R., Grove J. M., Haberl H., Heinimann A., Hostert P., Jobbágy E. G., Kerr S., Kuemmerle T., Lambin E. F., Lavorel S., Lele S., Mertz O., Messerli P., Metternicht G., Munroe D. K., Nagendra H., Nielsen J. Ø., Ojima D. S., Parker D. C., Pascual U., Porter J. R., Ramankutty N., Reenberg A., Roy Chowdhury R., Seto K. C., Seufert V., Shibata H., Thomson A., Turner II B. L., Urabe J., Veldkamp T., Verburg P. H., Zeleke G., zu Ermgassen* E. K. H. J. (2022). Ten facts about land systems for sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 119 (7) e2109217118; https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109217118

Meyfroidt*, P. (2021) Emerging agricultural expansion in northern regions: Insights from land-use research. One Earth 4 (12), 1661-1664. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.11.019

Rodríguez García*, V., Caravaggio, N., Gaspart, F., Meyfroidt*, P. (2021). Long- and Short-Run Forest Dynamics: An Empirical Assessment of Forest Transition, Environmental Kuznets Curve and Ecologically Unequal Exchange Theories. Forests, 12(4), 431. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12040431.

Turner, B. L., Meyfroidt*, P., Kuemmerle, T., Müller, D., & Roy Chowdhury, R. (2020). Framing the search for a theory of land use. Journal of Land Use Science, 15(4), 489-508. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2020.1811792

Rodriguez-García*, V., Gaspart, F., Kastner, T., Meyfroidt*, P. (2020). Agricultural intensification and land use change: Assessing country-level induced intensification, land sparing and rebound effect. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab8b14

Meyfroidt* P., Börner J., Garrett R., Gardner T., Godar J., Kis-Katos K., Soares-Filho B., Wunder, S. (2020) Focus on leakage and spillovers: informing land-use governance in a tele-coupled world. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7397

Kronenburg García*, A., & van Dijk, H. (2020). Towards a theory of claim making: Bridging access and property theory. Society & Natural Resources, 33(2), 167-183. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2018.1559381

Meyfroidt*, P., Roy Chowdhury, R., De Bremond, A., Ellis, E. C., Erb, K.-H., Filatova, T., Garrett, R. D., Grove, J. M., Heinimann, A., Kuemmerle, T., Kull, C. A., Lambin, E. F., Landon, Y., le Polain de Waroux, Y., Messerli, P., Müller, D., Nielsen, J., Peterson, G.D., Rodriguez García*, V., Schlüter, M., Turner, B. L., II, Verburg, P.H. (2018) Middle-range theories of land system change. Global Environmental Change, 53, 52-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.08.006

Gardner, T. A., Benzie, M., Börner, J., Dawkins, E., Fick, S., Garrett, R., Godar, J., Grimard, A., Lake, S., Larsen, R., Mardas, N., McDermott, C., Meyfroidt*, P., Osbeck, M., Persson, M., Sembres, T., Suavet, C., Strassburg, B., Trevisan, A., West, C., Wolvekamp, P. (2018). Transparency and sustainability in global commodity supply chains. World Development, 121, 163-177, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.05.025

Mapping, explaining and assessing the impacts of land use changes and emerging frontiers in Mozambique and Southern Africa (smallholders, largeholders, forest plantations, and field delineations)

Rufin*, P., Wang, S., Nogueira Lisboa, S., Hemmerling, J., Tulbure, M. G., Meyfroidt*, P. (2024) Taking it further: leveraging pseudo labels for field delineation across label-scarce smallholder regions. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 134, 104149 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.104149

Chiarella*, C., Rufin*, P., Abeygunawardane, D., Bey, A., Lisboa, S. N., Zavale, H., Meyfroidt*, P. (2024) Impacts of large-scale forestry investments on neighboring small-scale agriculture in northern Mozambique. Land Use Policy, 145, 107251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107251

Simoes, R., Sanchez, A., Picoli*, M.C.A., Meyfroidt*, P. (2023). The segmetric Package: Metrics for Assessing Segmentation Accuracy for Geospatial Data. The R Journal, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2023-030

Rufin*, P., Bey, A., Picoli*, M., Meyfroidt*, P. (2022). Large-area mapping of active cropland and short-term fallows in smallholder landscapes using PlanetScope data. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2022.102937.

Oliveira*, E., Meyfroidt*, P. (2022). Strategic Spatial Planning in Emerging Land-Use Frontiers - Evidence from Mozambique. Ecology & Society, 27(2):5. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-13001-270205

Kronenburg García* A., Meyfroidt* P., Abeygunawardane* D., Sitoe A. (2022). Waves and legacies: The making of an investment frontier in Niassa, Mozambique. Ecology & Society, 27(1):40. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-13159-270140

Abeygunawardane* D., Kronenburg García* A., Müller D., Sun Z., Sitoe A., Meyfroidt* P. (2022). Resource frontiers and agglomeration economies: The varied logics of land-based investing in Southern and Eastern Africa. Ambio 51, 1535-1551 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01682-z

Wiegink, N., & Kronenburg García*, A. (2022). Surplus to extraction: Resettlement as a “make live” intervention in Mozambique. The Extractive Industries and Society, 9, 101036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2021.101036

Oliveira*, E., Meyfroidt*, P. (2021). Strategic land-use planning instruments in tropical regions: state of the art and future research. Journal of Land Use Science, 16 (5-6), 479-497. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2021.2015471

Bey*, A., Meyfroidt*, P. (2021). Improved land monitoring to assess large-scale tree plantation expansion and trajectories in Northern Mozambique. Environmental Research Communications, 3 115009, https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ac26ab

Bey*, A., Jetimane*, J., Lisboa*, S. N., Ribeiro*, N., Sitoe*, A., Meyfroidt*, P. (2020). Mapping smallholder and large-scale cropland dynamics with a flexible classification system and pixel-based composites in an emerging frontier of Mozambique. Remote Sensing of Environment, 239, 111611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2019.111611

Weesie, R., & Kronenburg García*, A. (2018). From herding to farming under adaptation interventions in Southern Kenya: a critical perspective. Sustainability, 10(12), 4386. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124386

Kronenburg García*, A. (2018). Territorial Conflicts, Agency and the Strategic Appropriation of Interventions in Kenya’s Southern Drylands. Sustainability, 10(11), 4156. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114156

Meyfroidt*, P. (2017). Mapping farm size globally: benchmarking the smallholders debate. Environmental Research Letters, 12(3), 031002. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5ef6

Works on labor, livelihoods and their relations with land use intensity and sustainability

Chiarella*, C., Meyfroidt*, P., Abeygunawardane*, D., Conforti, P. (2023) Balancing the trade-offs between land productivity, labor productivity and labor demand. Ambio, 52, 1618-1634. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01887-4

Meyfroidt*, P., Abeygunawardane*, D., Ramankutty, N., Thomson, A., Zeleke, G. (2019). Interactions between land systems and food systems. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 38, 60-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.04.010

Meyfroidt*, P. (2017). Trade-offs between environment and livelihoods: Bridging the global land use and food security discussions. Global Food Security, 16, 9-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2017.08.001

Collaborations on land use, deforestation and conservation frontiers

Junquera, V., Schlüter, M., Rocha, J., Levin, S., Rubenstein, D., Wunderling, N., Castella, J.-C., Meyfroidt*, P. (2024) Crop booms as regime shifts. Royal Society Open Science, 11 (6), 231571 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231571.

Buchadas*, A., Jung, M., Bustamante, M., Fernández‐Llamazares, Á., Garnett, S. T., Nanni, A. S., Ribeiro, N., Meyfroidt*, P., Kuemmerle, T. (2023). Tropical dry woodland loss occurs disproportionately in areas of highest conservation value. Global Change Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16832

Pendrill, F., Gardner, T., Meyfroidt*, P., Persson, U.M., Adams, J., Azevedo, T., Bastos Lima, M.G., Baumann, M., Curtis, P.G., De Sy, V., Garrett, R., Godar, J., Goldman, E.D., Hansen, M.C., Heilmayr, R., Herold, M., Kuemmerle, T., Lathuillière, M.J., Ribeiro, V., Tyukavina, A., Weisse, M.J., West, C. (2022) Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation. Science 377 (6611), eabm9267. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abm9267.

Baumann, M., Gasparri, I., Buchadas*, A., Oeser, J., Meyfroidt*, P., Levers, C., Romero-Muñoz, A., le Polain de Waroux, Y., Müller, D., Kuemmerle, T. (2022) Frontier metrics for a process-based understanding of deforestation dynamics. Environmental Research Letters 17 095010. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac8b9a.

Buchadas*, A., Baumann, M., Meyfroidt*, P., Kuemmerle, T. (2022) Uncovering major types of deforestation frontiers across the world’s tropical dry woodlands. Nature Sustainability, 5, 619-627, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00886-9

Buchadas* A., Qin* S., Meyfroidt* P., Kuemmerle T. (2022) Conservation frontiers: understanding the geographic expansion of conservation. Journal of Land Use Science, 17 (1), 12-25 https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2021.2018516

Rudel, T. K., Meyfroidt*, P., Chazdon, R., Bongers, F., Sloan, S., Grau, H. R., & Van Holt, T. (2021). Response to “Withering the coloniality of the forest transition?”. Ambio, 50(9), 1765-1766. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01558-2

Oldekop, J. A., Rasmussen, L. V., Agrawal, A., Bebbington, A. J., Meyfroidt*, P., Bengston, D. N., Blackman, A., Brooks, S., Davidson-Hunt, I., Davies, P., Dinsi, S. C., Fontana, L. B., Gumucio, T., Kumar, C., Kumar, K., Moran, D., Mwampamba, T. H., Nasi, R., Nilsson, M., Pinedo-Vasquez, M. A., Rhemtulla, J. M., Sutherland, W. J., Watkins, C., Wilson, S. J. (2020). Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world. Nature Plants, 6(12), 1400-1407. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-00814-9

Eigenbrod, F., Beckmann, M., Dunnett, S., Graham, L., Holland, R. A., Meyfroidt*, P., Seppelt, R., Song, X.-P., Spake, R., Václavík, T., Verburg, P. H. (2020). Identifying Agricultural Frontiers for Modeling Global Cropland Expansion. One Earth, 3(4), 504-514. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.006

Reis* T. N. P. d., Meyfroidt*, P., zu Ermgassen*, E. K.H.J., West, C., Gardner, T., Bager, S.L., Croft, S., Lathuillière, M. J., Godar, J. (2020). Understanding trade stickiness to improve the sustainability of global commodity supply chains. One Earth, 3 (1), 100-115, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.06.012.

le Polain de Waroux, Y., Baumann, M., Gasparri, N. I., Gavier-Pizarro, G., Godar, J., Kuemmerle, T., Müller, R., Vázquez, F., Volante, J. N., Meyfroidt*, P. (2018) Rents, actors, and the expansion of commodity frontiers in the Gran Chaco. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108 (1), 204-225, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1360761

Broader collaborations on global land use, sustainability theories, other contexts

Schlüter M., Caniglia G., Orach K., Bodin Ö., Magliocca N., Meyfroidt* P., Reyers B. (2022). Why care about theories? Innovative ways of theorizing in sustainability science. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 54, 101154 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101154

Mastrángelo, M. E., Pérez-Harguindeguy, N., Enrico, L., Bennett, E., Lavorel, S., Cumming, G. S., Abeygunawardane*, D., Amarilla, L. D., Burkhard, B., Egoh, B. N., Frishkoff, L., Galetto, L., Huber, S., Karp, D. S., Ke, A., Kowaljow, E., Kronenburg-García*, A., Locatelli, B., Martín-López, B., Meyfroidt*, P., Mwampamba, T. H., Nel, J., Nicholas, K. A., Nicholson, C., Oteros-Rozas, E., Rahlao, S. J., Raudsepp-Hearne, C., Ricketts, T., Shrestha, U. B., Torres, C., Winkler, K. J., Zoeller, K.(2019). Key knowledge gaps to achieve global sustainability goals. Nature Sustainability, 2(12), 1115-1121. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0412-1

Schierhorn, F., Kastner, T., Kuemmerle, T., Meyfroidt*, P., Kurganova, I., Prishchepov, A. V., Erb, K.-H., Houghton, R. A., Müller, D. (2019). Large greenhouse gas savings due to changes in the post-Soviet food systems. Environmental Research Letters, 14(6), 065009. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1cf1

Munroe, D. K., Batistella, M., Friis, C., Gasparri, N. I., Lambin, E. F., Liu, J., Meyfroidt*, P., Moran, E., Nielsen, J. Ø. (2019) Governing flows in telecoupled land systems. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 38, 53-59, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.05.004

Thomson, A. M., Ellis, E. C., Grau, H. R., Kuemmerle, T., Meyfroidt*, P., Ramankutty, N., Zeleke, G. (2019). Sustainable intensification in land systems: trade-offs, scales, and contexts. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 38, 37-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.04.011

Nielsen, J. Ø., de Bremond, A., Chowdhury, R. R., Friis, C., Metternicht, G., Meyfroidt*, P., Munroe, D., Pascual, U., Thomson, A. (2019). Toward a normative land systems science. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 38, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.02.003

Oberlack, C., Sietz, D., Bürgi Bonanomi, E., de Bremond, A., Dell’Angelo, J., Eisenack, K., Ellis, E.C., Epstein, G., Giger, M., Heinimann, A., Kimmich, C., Kok, M.T.J., Manuel-Navarrete D., Messerli, P., Meyfroidt*, P., Václavík, T., Villamayor-Tomas S. (2019). Archetype analysis in sustainability research: meanings, motivations, and evidence-based policy making. Ecology and Society, 24(2) 26. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10747-240226

Rudel, T.K., Meyfroidt*, P., Chazdon, R., Bongers, F., Sloan, S., Grau, H R., Van Holt, T., Schneider, L. (2019). Whither the forest transition? Climate change, policy responses, and redistributed forests in the twenty-first century. Ambio, 49, 74-84, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-01143-0

Huber R., Bakker M., Balmann A., Berger T., Bithell M., Britz W., Brown C., Grêt-Regamey A., Hang X., Le Q. B., Mack G., Meyfroidt* P., Millington J., Müller B., Polhill G, Sun J., Seidl R., Troost C., Finger R. (2018). Representation of decision-making in European agricultural agent-based models. Agricultural Systems, 167, 143-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.09.007

Erb, K. H., Luyssaert, S., Meyfroidt*, P., Pongratz, J., Don, A., Kloster, S., Kuemmerle, T., Fetzel, T., Fuchs, R., Herold, M., Haberl, H., Jones, C.D., Marin Spiotta, E., McCallum, I., Robertson, E., Seufert, V., Fritz, S., Valade, A., Wiltshire, A., Dolman, A.J. (2016). Land management: data availability and process understanding for global change studies. Global Change Biology, 23 (2), 512-533, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13443