What we do
Our research agenda is advancing theory and spatial thinking to better understand social–ecological systems, promote land system sustainability, and improve human well-being. Land use is where people and nature meet. It drives biodiversity loss and carbon emissions, and it is also one of the largest levers we have for addressing them. We treat land as a social–ecological system: a system in which human decisions and ecological processes shape each other across space and time. Our work is quantitative and spatially explicit. We combine satellite Earth observation, geospatial data science, spatial statistics, land-system modelling, and deep learning, and we work from local to global scales.Three questions run through everything we do:
- How and why do land systems change?
- Who is affected — and how are biodiversity, ecosystem services, and wellbeing impacted?
- Which strategies can reconcile conservation, climate adaptation, and other land uses?
Research themes
The lab's research agenda and three core research themes.
Theme 1 · Advance theory and methods
Land system dynamics and telecoupled interactions — forest transition theory, land-use
displacement, nexus approaches, and Geo-AI.
Theme 2 · Understand social–ecological systems
Interactions between social and ecological processes, and what they mean for sustainability.
Theme 3 · Assess human well-being
How environmental change and social–ecological dynamics shape human well-being across
spatiotemporal scales.
Recent news
- 26–27 August 2026 — Asst. Prof. Ahmed Derdouri participates in the International Symposium on Integrated Use of Projected Population Mesh Data in Japan at FRIS, Tohoku University, Sendai.
- 3–7 August 2026 — Assoc. Prof. Ronald C. Estoque participates in the Fourth Lead Author Meeting of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities in Bhopal, India.
- 4 August 2026 — Asst. Prof. Ahmed Derdouri presents “Simulating Japan’s Land-Use Futures with a Scalable Agent-Based Modelling Framework” at The 1st Climate Change Adaptation Research Meeting at the University of Tokyo.
Where we are
We are based on the Aobayama campus of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, in the Graduate School of Environmental Studies.Meet the team
Faculty, researchers, and staff.
Join the lab
Opportunities for prospective students and collaborators.