Excessive land usage

Intensifying land use has generally brought with it a simplification of ecosystems and a reduction of biodiversity. Important causes and disturbances are deforestation, fragmentation of ecosystems, regulation of water streams, monocultures, selective breeding, abandoning of traditional crop varieties and livestock breeds, excessive application of agrochemicals and urbanization.

Land-cover changes contribute around one-fifth of annual carbon dioxide releases.

1. Land misuse
2. Excessive population demands on the environment

1. Uncontrolled physical expansion of cities
2. Overregulation of waterways
3. Overdevelopment of golf courses
4. Intensive farming
5. Increasing proportion of land surface devoted to urbanization
6. Fragmentation of natural habitat
7. Exploitation of land for the burial of the dead
8. Excessive use of land for agriculture
9. Excessive land usage by transport systems
10. Deforestation

1. Unavailability of building sites
2. Shortage of natural resources
3. Scarcity of residential land
4. Misuse of agricultural chemicals
5. Limited available land
6. Insufficient pastureland
7. Insufficient common land in urban environments
8. Increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
9. Increased reflection of solar radiation
10. Destructive changes to biogeochemical cycles
11. Decreasing genetic diversity of animals
12. Declining breeds of cultivated plants

1. Shortage of urban land
2. Rising sea level
3. Idle private land

1. Unused land
2. Unsustainable harvesting rates
3. Excessive consumption of resources in industrialized countries

1. Perpetuating environmental cycles
2. Analysing land cover change

1. Land
2. Excess