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Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits--"win-wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the main driver of climate variability at mid to high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, affecting wildfire activity, which in turn pollutes the air and contributes to human health problems and mortality, and potentially provides strong feedback to the climate system through emissions and land cover changes. Here we report the largest Southern Hemisphere network of annually resolved tree ring fire histories, consisting of 1,767 fire-scarred trees from 97 sites (from 22 °S to 54 °S) in southern South America (SAS), to quantify the coupling of SAM and regional wildfire variability using recently created multicentury proxy indices of SAM for the years 1531-2010 AD. We show that at interannual time scales, as well as at multidecadal time scales across 37-54 °S, latitudinal gradient elevated wildfire activity is synchronous with positive phases of the SAM over the years 1665-1995. Positive phases of the SAM are associated primarily with warm conditions in these biomass-rich forests, in which widespread fire activity depends on fuel desiccation. Climate modeling studies indicate that greenhouse gases will force SAM into its positive phase even if stratospheric ozone returns to normal levels, so that climate conditions conducive to widespread fire activity in SAS will continue throughout the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest transitions (FT) have been observed in many developed countries and more recently in the developing world. However, our knowledge of FT from tropical regions is mostly derived from case studies from within a particular country, making it difficult to generalize findings across larger regions. Here we overcome these difficulties by conducting a recent (2001-2010) satellite-based analysis of trends in forest cover across Central America, stratified by biomes, which we related to socioeconomic variables associated with human development. Results show a net decrease of woody vegetation resulting from 12,201 km2 of deforestation of moist forests and 6,825 km2 of regrowth of conifer and dry forests. The Human Development Index was the socioeconomic variable best associated with forest cover change. The least-developed countries, Nicaragua and Guatemala, experienced both rapid deforestation of moist forests and significant recovery of conifer and dry forests. In contrast, the most developed countries, Panama and Costa Rica, had net woody vegetation gain and a more stable forest cover configuration. These results imply a good agreement with FT predictions of forest change in relation to socioeconomic development, but strong asymmetry in rates and directions of change largely dependent upon the biome where change is occurring. The FT model should be refined by incorporating ecological and socioeconomic heterogeneity, particularly in multicountry and regional studies. These asymmetric patterns of forest change should be evaluated when developing strategies for conserving biodiversity and environmental services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]