A conceptual scheme for applying an integration strategy to agricultural land use on the US Great Plains

ocal and regional land-use and land-cover change is an important ingredient in the larger problem of global environmental change. Land-use patterns, driven by a variety of social processes, result in land-cover changes that affect biodiversity, water and radiation budgets, trace-gas emissions, and other factors that, cumulatively, alter the global climate and biosphere. Most research on global environmental change has focused on the causes and impacts of global climate change and ozone depletion, with less attention to biodiversity trends. Land-use and land-cover studies have been entrained in this work only secondarily, for example, to calculate the rate of loss of tropical forests or to assess habitat fragmentation.