Global Land Uses - Changes, Consequences & Challenges

18 March 2008

Professor Anette Reenberg

Human driven changes to the land surface have wide ranging influence on the functioning of the Earth System. The intensity of land cover change has increased rapidly over the last three hundred years, driven by population growth and increasing living standards. Expansion of agriculture and deforestation has significantly altered the environment. Recent development in land cover data sources enables us to obtain a reasonable overview of the global changes in land cover. Much less, however, is known about change in land use practices and agricultural and forest management that impact ecological services. In this lecture Professor Reenberg outlines the complexity of causes, processes and impacts of land change and call for a comprehensive framework to understand the human decisions that drive the global changes.

Broad Topics: Medicine and Life Science

Sub-topics: Environment

Areas: University

Professor Reenberg is currently at the University of Copenhagen. She has a Masters of Geography, 1974 University of Copenhagen and Doctorate in Science, 1999, University of Copenhagen.

Her research areas include agricultural landscapes in Denmark, agricultural land use systems in the semi-arid and arid tropics with special reference to desertification problems. She is Chair of the Global Land Project and is on a number of boards and committees including the council of the Royal Danish Geographical Society, and the council for Development Research. Professor Reenberg continues to work with the Sahel-Sudan Environmental Research Initiative, which amongst other goals, aims to investigate and propose best practices of Natural Resource Management systems, as seen from an economic, ecological, institutional, social and cultural development perspective.

Part of the 2008 Toyota-ANU Public Lecture Series