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Science 22 July 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5734, pp. 570 - 574
DOI: 10.1126/science.1111772
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Review

Global Consequences of Land Use

Jonathan A. Foley,1* Ruth DeFries,2 Gregory P. Asner,3 Carol Barford,1 Gordon Bonan,4 Stephen R. Carpenter,5 F. Stuart Chapin,6 Michael T. Coe,1{dagger} Gretchen C. Daily,7 Holly K. Gibbs,1 Joseph H. Helkowski,1 Tracey Holloway,1 Erica A. Howard,1 Christopher J. Kucharik,1 Chad Monfreda,1 Jonathan A. Patz,1 I. Colin Prentice,8 Navin Ramankutty,1 Peter K. Snyder9

Land use has generally been considered a local environmental issue, but it is becoming a force of global importance. Worldwide changes to forests, farmlands, waterways, and air are being driven by the need to provide food, fiber, water, and shelter to more than six billion people. Global croplands, pastures, plantations, and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by large increases in energy, water, and fertilizer consumption, along with considerable losses of biodiversity. Such changes in land use have enabled humans to appropriate an increasing share of the planet's resources, but they also potentially undermine the capacity of ecosystems to sustain food production, maintain freshwater and forest resources, regulate climate and air quality, and ameliorate infectious diseases. We face the challenge of managing trade-offs between immediate human needs and maintaining the capacity of the biosphere to provide goods and services in the long term.

1 Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), University of Wisconsin, 1710 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53726, USA.
2 Department of Geography and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
3 Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
4 National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Post Office Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307–3000, USA.
5 Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, 680 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
6 Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA.
7 Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
8 QUEST, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK.
9 Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, 105 South Gregory Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

{dagger} Present address: Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed: jfoley{at}wisc.edu

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E-Letters:

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