Land Systems and Transformation to Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue invites original papers (original research articles and review papers) that offer insight into potential transitions to sustainability by exploring land use as an integration of nature-based solutions with the dynamics, function, and resilience of land as coupled socio-ecological systems. Although issues at the nexus of food, water, energy, and nature-based systems are frequently identified, and calls are made for policies that achieve sustainable development goals, there remains a pressing need to identify examples of land systems that can achieve these outcomes at multiple spatial and temporal scales in order for transformations in land systems to achieve multiple environmental, social, and economic objectives.  The Special Issue invites papers that address the multidimensional nature of land systems and sustainability issues, as well as those that consider transformation to land systems and have sustainability as a core goal/suite of goals. Conceptual papers that attempt to generate holistic designs and harness an understanding of land use (as well as those that address the integration of climate, water, energy, food, biodiversity, and other states and driving forces of socio-ecological systems) are particularly welcome.  The expectation is that the Special Issue will assemble a collection of exemplars that describe and analyse transformative land systems, as well as examples of conceptual approaches that help with achieving sustainability through land use via changes in land management and policy.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that explore the following themes:

• nature-based solutions integrated into land use;
• land use contributions to multiple sustainable development goals;
• innovative and/or transformative land systems;
• science and policy transformation;
• multi-scale exemplars of multiple-goal systems.

We look forward to receiving your papers.

Prof. Dr. Richard Aspinall
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• nature-based solutions
• sustainable development goals
• innovative land systems
• land use science, management and policy transformation
• multi-scale exemplars