Wildfires, changing glaciers, deforestation, open-pit mining, increasing demands for food and bio-fuel production and the growth of megacities change our landscape. Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes comprehensively reviews the current knowledge on how natural and anthropogenic land-use/cover changes affect weather, air quality and climate worldwide and explains how these changes may trigger further land-use/cover changes.
Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes discusses how anthropogenic land-use/cover changes affected local and regional climate and air quality since the settlement of America and the industrialisation. It addresses the topic how long-range transport of pollutants and dust of devasted areas as well as teleconnections may cause changes far away from the areas where the land-use/cover changes occurred, for which land-use/cover change may become an international issue similar to CO2.
Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes also discusses relations to global change and future societal and scientific challenges related to land-use/cover changes.
1. Introduction
2. Physical and chemical principles
3. Impact of land-cover and land-cover changes
4. Future challenges
5. Conclusions