Articles in Land Use
Campfires degrade local ecosystems
Humans have been using fire since prehistory- indeed, it is one of our defining characteristics -distinguishing us from all other species.
There is little doubt that burning of forests to attract game and later, to clear …
Forest change in China
An interesting new historical study of forest cover change in China from 1700 to present reveals that up to the 1960s, deforestation prevailed, while since the 1960s, forests have been recovering.
Read the paper by Fanneng …
Guns, Germs and Carbon: post-Colombian pandemics drive global cooling
Diseases introduced by Europeans after 1492 are now known to have caused massive population declines in the Americas, and the failure of ancient agricultural systems across huge regions, many of which depended on the regular …
China’s rural revolution
China’s explosive economic growth has awed the world, and is now felt in every corner of the Earth. As a result, earth systems are being changed at unprecedented rates, while bringing more people into a …
Dynamics of village change in China’s Yangtze Delta (new publication)
China’s Yangtze Delta (also known as the Tai Lake Region) is home to some of the world’s most ancient anthropogenic landscapes. Rice was likely domesticated here 8,500 years ago, and the region’s nickname “land of …
Pushing back the Anthropocene at the AGU
The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis holds that human alteration of climate began with forest clearing and rice production more than 6 thousand years ago. Here are my personal impressions of recent work supporting this hypothesis, from …
Biofuels and other grand failures of thinking locally
Biofuels started off with such good intentions - energy self-sufficiency, reversing global warming and being green. Yet biofuels are now being blamed for creating much bigger problems than they ever would have solved. How did …
Land Use and Climate Change
by Erica Antill
At the end of August, my graduate adviser, Erle Ellis, was invited to a joint US-German conference in Berlin, Germany: Tough Choices: Land Use under a Changing Climate. (http://www.nkgcf.org/usg08) The NSF, which funded …
Anthromes on the cover of Frontiers in Ecology
At last! After nearly one year online, my paper with Navin Ramankutty introducing Anthropogenic Biomes (Anthromes), is now in print in the October issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Even better, it is …
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