Land Degradation Pattern and Ecosystem Services

Soil degradation has become one of the most crucial socioeconomic and environmental problems. According to IUCN (2015), soil degradation can be understood as "any form of deterioration of the natural potential of the soil that affects the integrity of the ecosystem in terms of reducing its sustainable ecological productivity". For this reason, the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 15.3 (SDG 15.3) proposes to create a world with zero net land degradation. Land use/land cover change (LUCC) is an important factor that can affect land surface properties and the provision of ecosystem services. Severe soil degradation due to LULC can result in the loss in the provision of ecosystem services on a landscape scale, meaning that they are affected not only by local processes but also by landscape-level processes occurring in heterogeneous spaces.

Degraded land loses its ability to provide essential ecosystem services, including climate regulation, water regulation, biodiversity support, and carbon storage, potentially reducing supporting (e.g., primary production), provisioning (e.g., organic products), and regulation (e.g., carbon sequestration) services of the land. Land degradation can be triggered by various factors, such as human activities and climatic factors with the spatial variability in soils, geomorphology, and topography impacting "vulnerability" to degradation. Improved understanding of landscape vulnerability to degradation and the evaluation of its drivers are necessary to provide benchmarks and frameworks to decision-makers.

The Research Topic can be used as a reference for the implementation of planning policies in view of achieving the Zero Net Land Degradation and Zero Net Land Take objectives by 2050. Papers contributed to this Research Topic will promote the development of an integrated landscape analysis model for the study of space-time dynamics, improving the current method based on landscape models.

We welcome studies including but not limited to the following themes:

• Research that supports the optimization of land use and sustainable management of the landscape with a view to reducing land degradation and increasing ecological protection;
• Development of strategies to evaluate landscape services and vulnerability to degradation;
• Degradation risk management approaches that make use of ecological landscape risk indices that underline the importance of implementing long-term dynamic monitoring and spatially differentiated risk management;
• Implementation of sustainable land-use systems supported by decision-making processes for optimization of land use and sustainable landscape management.

Keywords: Land Use, Land Cover, Ecosystem Services, Land Degradation, Spatial Heterogeneity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.