Land cover and land use

It is evident that, over the course of the last decades, human interventions have become the main trigger for transformations of terrestrial ecosystems, more so than natural phenomena (Vitousek, Mooney, Lubchenco & Melillo, 1997). The dynamics of land cover and land use change generate multiple impacts on socioeconomic and environmental systems with important effects on sustainability, food sovereignty, biodiversity, fragility of ecosystems and people to processes of global environmental variation. Variations in land cover and land use correspond to the substitution of one type of cover for another (e.g. deforestation), as well as changes in land management (e.g. agricultural extension), which can produce alterations in the structure and composition of natural ecosystems (Lesschen, Verburg, & Staal, 2015).