Course Description and Goals:



This course focuses on the relationship between human settlement
pattern, land use systems, and their impact on land cover and
landscape. The course integrates three overlapping aspects of land use
and cover analysis:



1.      Human ecology of production systems: in this part we look at
settlement pattern and ecological structure of different production
systems, such as foraging, pastoralism, subsistence and
market-oriented horticulture, industrial agriculture and husbandry. In
this part we emphasize the development of different production and
land use systems from a human ecological perspective focusing and
their spatial and temporal characteristics.


2.      Levels of analysis on land use research: We start with a
historical analysis of land use as an integrative area of study and
its interfaces with anthropology, geography, and ecology, specially
landscape ecology. This section is followed by a discussion of
appropriated variables in studying land use and land cover change at
different scales.  Examples of global, regional, and local analysis of
land use will be used to illustrate scale dependent variables and
models, as well as data integration across scales.



3.      Spatial and Temporal dynamics of land use systems: The course
will integrate methods of multi-temporal and spatial analysis of land
use and cover change (specially using remote sensing data), landscape
configuration and structure, and measures and rates of site specific
(e.g., fallow/crop frequency) and land use spatial intensification. We
will associate different measures of landscape structure and
configuration (e.g., fragmentation, diversity, patchness, complexity)
and agricultural intensification (e.g., frequency, input factors, area
size/productivity)  to describe the landscape footprint characterizing
different land use systems.



The course combines lectures and laboratory sections. Students will
take active role in laboratory and discussion of particular readings.
A research paper will be required on a topic of relevance to the
student (research paper related to thesis and dissertation
encouraged).