Dear Colleagues,
Agricultural land abandonment is globally a widespread land-use change process, but not sufficiently studied as other land use changes, such as deforestation. As a result, there has been little progress in understanding the global patterns, drivers and implications of land abandonment, particularly outside Europe.
This Special Issue on "Agricultural Land Abandonment: Patterns, Drivers and Consequences" is dedicated to bringing advances on our understanding of the patterns, proximate, and underlying drivers of agricultural land abandonment. We highly encourage submission of integrative studies on agricultural land abandonment, which involve different techniques, such as remotely-sensed observations, land-use modeling, sociological–ecological and economic studies, as well as system dynamic and Earth system modeling. We invite submission of innovative sociological and anthropology works, as well as economic studies with causal inference. Studies are welcomed that carefully disentangle the effect of land-use legacies and trigger events (e.g., political shocks), and telecoupled land-use systems. We expect the submission of studies on implications to food security and environmental and human well-being. The Special Issue aims to shed light on the interaction of drivers of abandonment across various scales, including household and regional studies.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Prishchepov
Dr. Fabian Löw
Dr. Florian Schierhorn
Guest Editors