Causes of land-use and land-cover change

Identifying the causes of land-use change requires understanding both how people make landuse decisions (decision-making processes) and how specific environmental and social factors interact to influence these decisions (decision-making context). It is also critical to understand that land use decisions are made and influenced by environmental and social factors across a wide range of spatial scales, from household level decisions that influence local land use practices, to policies and economic forces that can alter land use regionally and even globally.