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The purpose of this study is to measure local climate change response capacity and identify the existing gaps between local climate change action plans and land use plans.

This study uses content analysis method to statistically analyze 40 pioneering local jurisdictions' climate change action plans and land use plans.

The results show significant gaps in the two types of plans. Local climate change action plans have a higher quality of plan components including factual basis, targets, coordination, and communication than local land use plans. However, local land use plans have an even higher quality of policy plan components than action plans.

This study has extended established climate change concepts and practices by incorporating climate change considerations into the existing framework of local decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous larger‐scale climate policy studies to the local jurisdiction level to evaluate local land use planning capacity for climate change.

This paper evaluated 53 recently developed local comprehensive land use plans in California and analyzes how well these plans recognized the concepts of climate change and prepared for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The descriptive results show that local land use plans reflect very low awareness and little analysis for climate change; however, the actions for climate change varied widely in scope and content in their plans.

This paper provides policymakers important empirical evidence to improve local land use planning capacities for climate change.

This study aims to analyze the changes in the ecosystem service value (ESV) in response to land use and contribute significantly to ecological construction and sustainable development.

The present study was conducted in the upper Zhanghe River region based on the moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer Land Cover Type product MCD12Q1 by using geographic information system (GIS) methods to process and re-classify the land-use data and using the Chinese ESV equivalent weight factors to investigate changes in land use and resulting changes in ESV between 2001 and 2013.

The results showed significant fluctuations in ESV between 2001 and 2013: there was a decline in ESV from 2001 to 2004, followed by a gradual rise after 2004, and the overall ESV exceeded 2001 levels by the end of 2013. However, the pattern of ESV change differed across geographic locations, and each administrative region contributed differently to the overall trend. The analysis confirmed that the land-use change was closely related to the change in its ESV, and the coefficients of sensitivity of ESV for all types of land use were less than one, indicating that the coefficient value of ESV lacked elasticity.

Therefore, to promote sustainable development in the upper Zhanghe River region, ESV should be taken into consideration when planning land use, especially for land types with high ESV, such as water bodies and forestlands.

The results can provide scientific support for the sustainable development of the ecological, economic and societal aspects of the upper Zhanghe River region. In addition, county-level administrative divisions were set as the basic research unit for the analysis and discussion of ESV changes in each unit within the research period and its impact on the overall ESV of the entire area to lay down a foundation for the analysis of the ESV spatial dynamic distribution in the entire research site.

The objective of this paper is to describe an easily understandable integrated modelling framework for analysing the combined effects of changes in land‐use and climate on the leaching of phosphorus using regional IPCC‐based land‐use and climate scenarios. In addition, the paper reflects on the added value of a geospatial data‐based modelling approach from a river basin management perspective.

Regional land‐use scenarios were simulated for the whole official river basin planning unit of the Oulujoki‐Iijoki River Basin District using a land‐use simulation model. The nutrient leaching modelling on phosphorus was carried out in another raster‐based freeware for a smaller sub‐basin, Temmesjoki river basin.

Regional land use scenarios could be simulated taking into account the local conditions, such as the vicinity to water, and development options in agriculture on regional scale. The magnitude and leaching pattern of phosphorus in the future is related to the overall share of agricultural land on drainage basin level. The authors’ results also indicate that the local spatial structure of built‐up and agricultural areas may play a central role in nutrient leaching assessment. If the spatial structure is of importance, this may have further implications for the environmental planners working with river basin management.

This research takes a step further in bringing the global scenario framework to the local and practical level for various practical purposes in river basin management. The research provides an approach to spatially identify the possible impact of changes in land‐use and in climatic conditions on nutrient leaching.

All countries are addressing the drastic climate changes as high priority issues. The impact of climate change on coastal land use in Taiwan has been especially severe due to the country's long coastline. As such, developing strategies to promote the protection of coastal land is critical for the sustainable development of the land. At present, even though the central government has developed the relevant adaptation strategies and implementation plans in response to climate change. Due to the limited resources, determining which protection strategy should be implemented as a top priority will require a strategic evaluation for planning and reference purposes.

While most of the existing literature on coastal land use has been focused on the establishment of a vulnerability index along with an analysis of adaptation strategies very little of the existing literature discusses research that has been conducted in relation to an in-depth analysis of climate change and coastal land use. Therefore, this study uses the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to conduct an exploration of coastal land use and protection strategy. The study compiled the literature and related data to establish five major assessment dimensions and 16 protection strategy evaluation indicators. After the empirical investigation and analysis, the findings demonstrated that the designation of coastal conservation areas is the most important aspect in terms of strategies to protect coastal land, followed by land subsidence control and the establishment of land disaster warning systems.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the extensive review on dynamic monitoring of forestry area in China.

Countermeasure and suggestions were proposed for three aspects including the establishment of data sets with unified standards, top-level design of monitoring and assessment and analysis models, and establishment of the decision support platform with multiple scenario simulation.

Finally, the authors proposed key research area in this field, i.e., improving the systematic and optimal forest management through integrating and improving the data, models and simulation platforms and coupling the data integration system, assessment system and decision support system.

The authors explored the limitation of dynamic monitoring and state of the art research on data accumulation, professional model development and the analytical platform.

Bioenergy is a key component of climate change mitigation strategies aiming at low stabilization. Its versatility and capacity to generate negative emissions when combined with carbon capture and storage add degrees of freedom to the timing of emission reductions. This paper aims to explore the robustness of a bioenergy-based mitigation strategy by addressing several dimensions of uncertainty on biomass potential, bioenergy use and induced land use change emissions.

Different mitigation scenarios were explored by two different energy-economy optimization models coupled to the same land use model, which provides a common basis for the second generation bioenergy dynamics in the two energy-economy models.

Using bioenergy is found to be a robust mitigation strategy as demonstrated by high biomass shares in primary energy demand in both models and in all mitigation scenarios.

A variety of possible storylines about future uses of biomass exist. The comparison of the technology choices preferred by the applied models helps understand how future emission reductions can be achieved under alternative storylines.

The presented comparison-based assessment goes beyond other comparison studies because both energy-economy models are coupled to the same land use model.

This paper analyzes changes in property rights, land uses, and culturally based notions of ownership that have emerged following privatization of communal land in a Samburu pastoralist community in Northern Kenya. The research challenges the strict dichotomy between private and collective rights often found in property rights literature, which does not match empirical findings of overlapping and contested rights.

Part of a long-term ethnographic project investigating the process of land privatization and its outcomes, this paper draws on in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted by the author in Samburu County in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Interviews focused on how land is being used post-privatization as well as emerging social norms regulating its use.

Privatization privileges male household heads with powers including rental, sale, and bequeathal of land. However, informal rights to land extend to women and other household members. Exercise of legal rights is frequently limited due to knowledge and resource gaps. New rules regulating land use have emerged, some represent sharp divergences from past practice while others support shared access to land. These changes challenge Samburu cultural notions of individuality, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

This research illuminates complex changes following legal shifts in property rights and demonstrates the interactions between formal laws and informal social norms and cultural beliefs about land. The result is that privatization does not have easily predictable outcomes as some theories of property would suggest.

Empirical investigation of the effects of legal changes enables fuller understanding of the implications of policy changes that many governments are pursuing privatization with limited understanding of the likely effects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how well local planners have recognized the issues surrounding climate change, the analysis that jurisdictions have conducted on climate change, and policies that have been implemented to address climate change.

This study conducted a mail questionnaire survey for 214 counties ' planning directors in the USA and received 53 effective responses. This survey examined how well local planning directors have been prepared for climate change, including awareness, analysis scope, and implementation strategy.

The descriptive results indicate that the directors who responded to this survey had a relatively high (79.87 percent) level of awareness for climate change; but they had limited (34.94 percent) analysis scopes to assess the sources, impacts, and risk of climate change in their jurisdictions. These directors had partially but not fully (51.51 percent) developed local land use planning implementation strategies to mitigate or adapt climate change. The regression model indicates that the political commitment and planning personnel resources have significant influence on local planning directors ' actions for climate change.

This paper provides policy implications to improve local land use planning ability for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Over the past decade, biofuels production in the European Union and the United States has boomed – much of this due to government mandates and subsidies. The United States has now surpassed Brazil as the world's leading producer of ethanol. The economic and environmental impact of these biofuel programs has become an important question of public policy. Due to the complex intersectoral linkages between biofuels and crops, livestock as well as energy activities, CGE modeling has become an important tool for their analysis. This chapter reviews recent developments in this area of economic analysis and suggests directions for future research.