Keywords:

resilience, driving forces, land use, capacity, farmland

Organizers:

  • Chen-Fa Wu, Professor, Department of Horticulture, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
  • Szu-Hung “Vickey” Chen, Adjunct Assistant Professor & Research Fellow, International Master Program of Agriculture (IMPA) National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan

Session description:

Rural is one of major agricultural production zones, providing essential ecosystem services, such as primary production, crop and so on. Considering lower land price and locations close to urban, rural land are often prone to become new land development, urban sprawl, infrastructure sites, leading to agricultural production decrease, landscape fragmentation, wildlife habitat degradation, and reduction of ecosystem service capacities. Furthermore, changing national agricultural policies could alter agricultural production behavior and influence land use patterns. For example, in some locations, the agricultural land fallowing subsidy policy offer higher payment than incomes of growing rice, then, causing some farmland retirement. It indicates that driving forces that cause land use change in rural areas are diversified, including natural environments, agricultural economy, social factors, land planning, agricultural policies, and even governmental master plans. Besides that, the dynamic drivers and telecoupling of rural land use changes, rural land change and environmental benefit assessment under the trend of decreasing population, and cost-benefit assessment of resilient rural land use management strategy are all important future research topics.
The concept of resilience in rural emphasizes that communities should build capability and adaptability while facing impacts of natural and/or man-made disaster; then to be able to sustain their operating functions independently. Since rural communities are under multiple disturbances including climate changes, rural land policy changes, human development and natural disasters, it is an urgent task to understand the extent and influence of resilience and to develop corresponding, suitable land use management strategy in rural area.