Significance of Telecoupling for Exploration of Land-Use Change

Land systems are increasingly influenced by distal connections: the externalities and unintended consequences of social and ecological processes which occur in distant locations, and the feedback mechanisms that lead to new institutional developments and governance arrangements. Economic globalization and urbanization accentuate these novel telecoupling relationships. The prevalence of telecoupling in land systems demands new approaches to research and analysis in land science. This chapter presents a working definition of a telecoupled system, emphasizing the role of governance and institutional change. The social, institutional, and ecological processes and conditions through which telecoupling emerges are described. Analysis of these relationships demands integrative and diverse epistemological perspectives and methods, and requires a focus on how the motivations and values of social actors relate to telecoupling processes, as well as on the mechanisms that produce unanticipated outcomes and feedback relationships among distal land systems. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.