Land use and land cover is an important component in understanding the interactions of the human activities with the environment and thus it is necessary to be able to simulate such changes. The authors have developed a national scale, integrated, dynamic time-series simulation model called the ‘Anthropogenically Engineered Transformations of Land Use and Land Cover’ (AGENT-LUC) Model, which si...

Human activities such as research & development, infrastructure or management are of major importance for agricultural productivity. These activities can be summarized as agricultural land-use intensity. We present a measure, called the τ -factor, which is an alternative to current measures for agricultural landuse intensity. The τ -factor is the ratio between actual yield and a reference yield...

On the basis of elaborating the process of institutional change of Chinese agricultural land and by reference to the State Theory of North, the article analyzes constituent functions for institutional activities by the state for its realization of maximization of utility and further the role of the state in the process of institutional change of Chinese agricultural land.

Improving security of tenure over agricultural land has recently been the focus of a number of large land certification programs. While the main justification for these efforts was to increase productive investments and facilitate land rental transactions, we show that if access rights were tied to actual land use in the previous regime, these programs can also lead to increased outmigration fr...

Afforestation of agricultural lands has been one of the major land use changes in China in recent decades. To better understand the effect of such land use change on soil quality, we investigated selected soil physical, chemical and microbial properties (0-15 cm depth) in marginal agricultural land and a chronosequence of poplar (Populus euramericana cv. 'N3016') plantations (5-, 10-, 15- and 2...

The ASTER sensor onboard NASA’s Earth observing satellite Terra is an optical remote sensor comprised of 14 spectral bands ranging from the visible to thermal infrared region. With its multispectral bands the sensor bears the potential to provide data for both a detailed land use classification of heterogeneously vegetated areas. This study evaluates the potential of ASTER data for land use cla...

This paper aims to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine investments, and the demand for machine services using farm panel data from China. Recently, China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion of machine rentals and machine services provided by specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization of agricultural production. On the other hand, the empirical results ...

On August 18, 2002, the Hyperion hyperspectral imager onboard the EO-1 platform recorded data over an intensively used agricultural area in north western Switzerland, the Limpach Valley. The sensor’s 198 spectral bands between 400 and 2500 nm (Level 1B1) and a spatial resolution of 30 m bear the potential for both a detailed land use classification and an accurate estimation of biophysical and ...

Agricultural-induced increase of nitrate (NO3) loading in groundwater is a worldwide problem. This study investigates the impacts of agricultural activities on groundwater NO3 pollution in a Yellow River irrigated region. The agricultural land use patterns are dependent on the land and water conditions. Besides wheat–maize rotation, the most popular cultivation pattern, other patterns with high...

This study investigates how property taxes a¤ect development timing. A theoretical framework motivates an empirical model that explores how land use change decisions are made over time. A survival model using plot level data is estimated to show how di¤erent factors in‡uence the timing of development of individual parcels. The results suggest that higher taxes slow development, as expected. Wit...