Symposium # 17: Land Use and Land Cover Change: The Last Century and Prospects for the 21st Century.

Organized by: L. Johnson and P.A. Matson.
Tuesday, August 8, 2000
1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Ballroom II - Cliff Lodge

In the last century, as much as 40% of the earth's land surface has been transformed by humans. This land use/land cover change continues at unprecedented rates as the human population continues to grow exponentially. These land cover changes in many cases fundamentally alter basic ecological processes such as biogeochemical cycles and availability of key limiting nutrients, trace gas fluxes, C sequestration, atmosphere-biosphere interactions, and biodiversity. These land transformations may perhaps irreversibly alter the ability of natural ecosystems to sustain an ever growing human population in the 21st century. The objective of this symposium is to bring together speakers with a variety of expertise ranging from remote sensing, biogeochemistry, community ecology, and socioeconomics to synthesize the present state of knowledge of rates and causes of land transformations in the US and globally, and to predict potential ecosystem consequences for the 21st century. Such an ESA symposium would make an excellent venue for bringing the highly interdisciplinary and newly emerging issues of land use and land cover change to the forefront of the ecological community.