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Understanding interactions between social and ecological processes and their implications for sustainability. 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. This theme treats land as a social–ecological system: one in which human decisions and ecological processes shape each other across space and time.

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Topics

  • Land-use and land-cover change — measuring how land systems change, and attributing those changes to social, economic, and biophysical drivers.
  • Biodiversity and ecosystem services — how land-system change alters habitat, ecosystem function, and the services people depend on.
  • Nature-positive and strong sustainability perspectives — assessing land-use options against criteria that do not permit natural capital to be substituted away.

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Approach

We combine satellite image time series with national statistical and geospatial datasets and published global products, analysed reproducibly so that results can be checked, extended, and reused. Ecological and social data are brought together at a common spatial support so that interactions — not just parallel trends — can be examined. This framing pushes us to look at interactions and feedbacks rather than at land cover alone, to follow dynamics through time rather than compare snapshots, and to trace connections across scales.

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Selected publications

Theme selections may include work published before the lab was established. See the lab publication list and individual faculty profiles for other work.
  • Estoque, R. C. (2026). Recent trends in tropical forest loss continue to challenge global sustainability and conservation efforts. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 1–17. DOI
  • Estoque, R. C. (2026). Why tropical forest loss persists: A framework for transformative conservation action. Global Change Biology, 32(1), e70694. DOI
  • Zhang, X., Wan, W. & Estoque, R. C. (2025). Impacts of urban and cropland expansions on natural habitats in Southeast Asia. Nature Communications, 16, 8479. DOI
  • Estoque, R. C. (2024). Some key considerations for implementing the nexus approach in biodiversity conservation research and practice. Science Progress, 107(1). DOI
  • Gao, Y., Solórzano, J. V., Estoque, R. C. & Tsuyuzaki, S. (2023). Tropical dry forest dynamics explained by topographic and anthropogenic factors: A case study in Mexico. Remote Sensing, 15(5), 1471. DOI
  • Peros, C. S., Dasgupta, R., Estoque, R. C. & Basu, M. (2022). Ecosystem services of ‘Trees Outside Forests (TOF)’ and their contribution to the contemporary sustainability agenda: A systematic review. Environmental Research Communications, 4(11), 112002. DOI
  • Estoque, R. C. & Murayama, Y. (2012). Examining the potential impact of land use/cover changes on the ecosystem services of Baguio City, the Philippines: A scenario-based analysis. Applied Geography, 35(1–2), 316–326. DOI