María Piquer-Rodríguez

Land system science (LSS) has emerged as a central discipline at the intersection of global environmental change and sustainability research, yet its core vocabulary, publication networks, and conceptual frameworks remain largely anchored in the English language and associated Western scientific traditions. This creates particular challenges in Latin America, where decades of academic, governmental, and Indigenous and local knowledge on land-related processes have developed through distinct terminological and epistemological traditions that do not map directly onto LSS concepts. We conducted a multilingual survey of 156 land systems actors across Latin America, spanning academic, governmental, non-governmental, and community-based organizations, to characterize how the field is understood, translated, and operationalized across the region. We found that engagement with land systems topics exceeds identification with the LSS term itself, suggesting that the Latin American land systems community is larger than those identifying with LSS. Conceptual frameworks used in the region are pluralistic, with social-ecological systems, territorial studies, landscape ecology, and political ecology all sharing questions that LSS addresses under a single label. A majority of respondents supported developing a shared Spanish and Portuguese equivalent for LSS, with a clear preference for terms rooted in territorio over biophysical alternatives, reflecting deeper ontological commitments to land as a socially constructed and politically inhabited space. Drawing on these preferences, we propose Ciencias de sistemas territoriales (Spanish) and Ciências de sistemas territoriais (Portuguese) as working translations of land systems science for the Latin American context. Inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge into research remains shallow and epistemologically stratified, concentrated among researchers with critical or transdisciplinary orientations rather than fixed within the whole field. Taken together, these findings call for deeper engagement among the broader community of LSS actors in terminological dialogue and knowledge co-production that would allow Latin American, Indigenous, and relational traditions to shape the foundations of land system science globally.

Land system science (LSS) has emerged as a central discipline at the intersection of global environmental change and sustainability research, yet its core vocabulary, publication networks, and conceptual frameworks remain largely anchored in the English language and associated Western scientific traditions. This creates particular challenges in Latin America, where decades of academic, governmental, and Indigenous and local knowledge on land-related processes have developed through distinct terminological and epistemological traditions that do not map directly onto LSS concepts. We conducted a multilingual survey of 156 land systems actors across Latin America, spanning academic, governmental, non-governmental, and community-based organizations, to characterize how the field is understood, translated, and operationalized across the region. We found that engagement with land systems topics exceeds identification with the LSS term itself, suggesting that the Latin American land systems community is larger than those identifying with LSS. Conceptual frameworks used in the region are pluralistic, with social-ecological systems, territorial studies, landscape ecology, and political ecology all sharing questions that LSS addresses under a single label. A majority of respondents supported developing a shared Spanish and Portuguese equivalent for LSS, with a clear preference for terms rooted in territorio over biophysical alternatives, reflecting deeper ontological commitments to land as a socially constructed and politically inhabited space. Drawing on these preferences, we propose Ciencias de sistemas territoriales (Spanish) and Ciências de sistemas territoriais (Portuguese) as working translations of land systems science for the Latin American context. Inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge into research remains shallow and epistemologically stratified, concentrated among researchers with critical or transdisciplinary orientations rather than fixed within the whole field. Taken together, these findings call for deeper engagement among the broader community of LSS actors in terminological dialogue and knowledge co-production that would allow Latin American, Indigenous, and relational traditions to shape the foundations of land system science globally.

Land system science (LSS) has emerged as a central discipline at the intersection of global environmental change and sustainability research, yet its core vocabulary, publication networks, and conceptual frameworks remain largely anchored in the English language and associated Western scientific traditions. This creates particular challenges in Latin America, where decades of academic, governmental, and Indigenous and local knowledge on land-related processes have developed through distinct terminological and epistemological traditions that do not map directly onto LSS concepts. We conducted a multilingual survey of 156 land systems actors across Latin America, spanning academic, governmental, non-governmental, and community-based organizations, to characterize how the field is understood, translated, and operationalized across the region. We found that engagement with land systems topics exceeds identification with the LSS term itself, suggesting that the Latin American land systems community is larger than those identifying with LSS. Conceptual frameworks used in the region are pluralistic, with social-ecological systems, territorial studies, landscape ecology, and political ecology all sharing questions that LSS addresses under a single label. A majority of respondents supported developing a shared Spanish and Portuguese equivalent for LSS, with a clear preference for terms rooted in territorio over biophysical alternatives, reflecting deeper ontological commitments to land as a socially constructed and politically inhabited space. Drawing on these preferences, we propose Ciencias de sistemas territoriales (Spanish) and Ciências de sistemas territoriais (Portuguese) as working translations of land systems science for the Latin American context. Inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge into research remains shallow and epistemologically stratified, concentrated among researchers with critical or transdisciplinary orientations rather than fixed within the whole field. Taken together, these findings call for deeper engagement among the broader community of LSS actors in terminological dialogue and knowledge co-production that would allow Latin American, Indigenous, and relational traditions to shape the foundations of land system science globally.

1. The increasing unpredictability, variability, and novelty of extreme weather events and global crises significantly impact agricultural systems across multiple domains (Darnhofer 2021; Salembier...

The Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences are research disciplines in which a large amount of research data is generated and in which the principles of FAIR and open data are now receiving considerable attention.Both FAIR and open data aim to enable and enhance the reusability of data, but before research data can be made available for broad reuse, it is essential to clarify rights and permissions: who is authorized to share the data and with whom, who may publish it, how credit for data-related work will be attributed, and what arrangements apply if a researcher transfers to another institution.Concrete regulation of usage rights for research data continues to pose major challenges for researchers and research institutions alike. There are legal uncertainties due to room for interpretation in the general legal requirements, and in many cases, there are no systematised workflows for defining usage rights. To close this gap, a working group at the Department of Earth Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin has developed and implemented a ‘Data Agreement’ that provides clarity on the exercise of usage rights to research data within the group (for students and researchers) and also helps to operationalise FAIR and CARE principles in everyday research practice.The ‘Data Agreements’ are used as an opportunity to discuss expectations regarding data management and to define and agree on binding rights of use for research data with each new member of the group or student´s thesis projects. We present the key aspects of the ‘Data Agreements’ and report on practical experiences with their use. We show how it not only facilitates clear agreements and prevent subsequent disagreements. In addition to legal aspects, practical aspects such as backup strategies or storage locations can also be specified within this process and thus improve the data management practice within the group.The ‘Data Agreements’ [1] were developed in the working group together with the Research Data Management team and the university's legal office and are available under CC0 for reuse in other research groups or institutions. While the agreements were developed within a university context and relate to German academic practice and law, they may be reused or serve as templates for other research institutions, in other national or international contexts, and over a wide variety of Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences disciplines and beyond.[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/refubium-4635

Tropical dry forests are under high and rising pressure from agricultural expansion, resulting in widespread forest conversion and fragmentation. Additionally, remaining forests experience a range of edge effects through agriculture once it has been established, yet such agriculture‐driven edge effects remain weakly understood. Focusing on the Argentine Dry Chaco, a global hotspot for deforestation, we utilized satellite‐based forest structure indicators within a Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling framework to quantify and map agricultural edge effects on fractional tree and shrub cover, and aboveground biomass. Specifically, we assessed how far edges reach into forests away from the forest‐agriculture interface, whether edge effects differ among post‐deforestation land uses (i.e., cropping vs. ranching), and how edge effects evolve over time. We reveal large agriculture‐driven edge effects in the Chaco, penetrating > 700 m into adjacent forests, with reductions of up to 41% in our structural parameters. Cropping was associated with much stronger edge effects than pastures, likely due to the combined effect of environmental (e.g., wind) and management (e.g., pesticide drift) factors, while silvopastures had much lower edge effects. Projecting our models across the region showed that 18% of remaining forests are degraded, with an estimated total loss of 92.3 million tons of aboveground biomass. Lastly, agriculture‐driven edge effects intensified for long periods after initial deforestation (e.g., > 30 years for tree cover), suggesting agricultural expansion creates a degradation debt that unfolds over decades. We conclude that agriculture‐driven edge effects are a major, yet often overlooked, consequence of agricultural expansion, leading to profound degradation far beyond the deforestation footprint. Despite their importance, these effects remain systematically underestimated in sustainability analyses, such as carbon accounting or biodiversity impact assessments. Our work supports views that conservation planning should prioritize large and contiguous forest patches to help maintain ecologically functional forests.

Deforestation linked to agricultural activities is a major sustainability concern. Planning towards sustainable agricultural landscapes in the (sub-)tropics requires indicators that capture the many aspects of social-ecological cost and benefit of agriculture. Agricultural production strategies are developed using the best available data and knowledge such as high-yield locations, distance to storage facilities, or certification bonuses. However, there is often a divide between sustainable production data generated by the scientific community and current data that are of interest to actors, such as those in the agribusiness sector. Here, we describe how the harmonization of crop production, conservation, and social data used by scientists and agribusiness is possible using a participatory exercise based on knowledge co-production (i.e., generation of knowledge in a collaborative way) of socio-economic and environmental indicators (such as agricultural production, logistics, or the location of indigenous communities). This was made available through an online decision support platform that facilitated the generation of sustainable entrepreneurial strategies. We tested this exercise for the social-environmentally vulnerable Argentine Chaco dry forest, subject to some of the highest rates of deforestation globally, mainly due to soybean production. The cooperation between participants of this exercise built a knowledge exchange network that was key for informing decision-makers and highlighted information gaps including agricultural productivity, accessibility of regions, and the vulnerability of rural communities. Our exercise may be applicable to other agricultural commodity frontiers and showcases the value of including actors’ priorities in the design of indicators to ensure their policy impact and to achieve food systems’ sustainability.

Biographical features like social and economic status, ethnicity, sexuality, care roles, and gender unfairly disadvantage individuals within academia. Authorship patterns should reflect the social dimension behind the publishing process and co-authorship dynamics. To detect potential gender biases in the authorship of papers and examine the extent of women’s contribution in terms of the substantial volume of scientific production in Ecology, we surveyed papers from the top-ranked journal Ecology from 1999 to 2021. We developed a Women’s Contribution Index (WCI) to measure gender-based individual contributions. Considering gender, allocation in the author list, and the total number of authors, the WCI calculates the sum of each woman’s contribution per paper. We compared the WCI with women’s expected contributions in a non-gender-biased scenario. Overall, women account for 30% of authors of Ecology, yet their contribution to papers is higher than expected by chance (i.e., over-contribution). Additionally, by comparing the WCI with an equivalent Men’s Contribution Index, we found that women consistently have higher contributions compared to men. We also observed a temporal trend of increasing women’s authorship and mixed-gender papers. This suggests some progress in addressing gender bias in the field of ecology. However, we emphasize the need for a better understanding of the pattern of over-contribution, which may partially stem from the phenomenon of over-compensation. In this context, women might need to outperform men to be perceived and evaluated as equals. The WCI provides a valuable tool for quantifying individual contributions and understanding gender biases in academic publishing. Moreover, the index could be customized to suit the specific question of interest. It serves to uncover a previously non-quantified type of bias (over-contribution) that, we argue, is the response to the inequitable structure of the scientific system, leading to differences in the roles of individuals within a scientific publishing team.

Commodity agriculture continues to spread into tropical dry forests globally, eroding their social-ecological integrity. Understanding where deforestation frontiers expand, and which impacts this process triggers, is thus important for sustainability planning. We reconstructed past land-system change (1985–2015) and simulated alternative land-system futures (2015–2045) for the Gran Chaco, a 1.1 million km² global deforestation hotspot with high biological and cultural diversity. We co-developed nine plausible future land-system scenarios, consisting of three contrasting policy narratives (Agribusiness, Ecomodernism, and Integration) and three agricultural expansion rates (high, medium, and low). We assessed the social-ecological impacts of our scenarios by comparing them with current biodiversity, carbon density, and areas used by forest-dependent people. Our analyses revealed four major insights. First, intensified agriculture and mosaics of agriculture and remaining natural vegetation have replaced large swaths of woodland since 1985. Second, simulated land-system futures until 2045 revealed potential hotspots of natural vegetation loss (e.g. western and southern Argentinian Chaco, western Paraguayan Chaco), both due to the continued expansion of existing agricultural frontiers and the emergence of new ones. Third, the strongest social-ecological impacts were consistently connected to the Agribusiness scenarios, while impacts were lower for the Ecomodernism and Integration scenarios. Scenarios based on our Integration narrative led to lower social impacts, while Ecomodernism had lower ecological impacts. Fourth, comparing recent land change with our simulations showed that 10% of the Chaco is on a pathway consistent with our Agribusiness narrative, associated with adverse social-ecological impacts. Our results highlight that much is still at stake in the Chaco. Stricter land-use and conservation planning are urgently needed to avoid adverse social-ecological outcomes, and our results charting the option space of plausible land-system futures can support such planning.