UNCORRECTED PROOF Land Use Policy 0 (2002) ]]]–]]] Report Meeting in the middle: the challenge of meso-level integration William McConnell ACT, Student Building 331, Indiana University, 701 E. Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405-7100, USA One of the main challenges facing the land-use/cover change research community is the forging of robust linkages between the fine-grained understandings of land-usedecisionsandbroad-scalemodelsoflandcover. A number of projects have undertaken this challenge in particular regions, and it is now time to derive lessons from these experiences to facilitate future communica- tion between these two groups. In order to address this issue,aninternationalworkshopwasorganizedinIspra, Italy, October 17–20, 2000 by the Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) Project (http://www.indiana.edu/ Bact/focus1/), a programme element of the Interna- tional Geosphere–Biosphere Programme, and the Inter- national Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. 1 The purpose of the workshop was to enhance collaboration between those who study household decision-making and its land-cover consequences, and those who seek to explain broader-scale land cover through socio-economic driving forces. It has been proposed that the meeting place of these two groups lies attheregionalscale,representingboththe‘‘upperlimit’’ (maximumextent)ofthesurvey-basedland-useanalyses and the ‘‘lower limit’’ (finest grain) of land-cover analysesbasedonthecurrentlyavailableremote-sensing data. The workshop had the following objectives: * To Specify the problems entailed in integrating land- use and land-cover classifications; * To Ascertain the effectiveness of approaches used to date to overcome such problems; and * To Evaluate the utility of the FAO’s recently completed Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) as a vehicle for integration. Much of the discussion at the workshop centred on the multitude of schemes for characterizing, or ‘‘classi- fying’’ land use and land cover. Because the land-use studies begin with the particularities of place, culture and local environment, the categories used tend to be unique, and difficult to aggregate in order to fit neatly intomorebroadlyapplicableclassificationschemes.The converse is true of land-cover studies, which utilize data that indicate broad land-cover types, and from which land use can only be inferred by context and verified through ground-truthing. The challenge is thus to come to an agreement on classification schemes that translate seamlessly between scales of analysis. Efforts to harmonize land-cover classification have been under way for the last decade, with an interna- tional consortium led by the UN FAO’s Sustainable Development Department, leading to the development of a methodology known as the LCCS. This methodol- ogy has been operationalized under the aegis of the FAO’s Africover project, resulting in a software application. The LCCS software allows for the specifi- cation of mutually exclusive land-cover classes within a hierarchical and universal framework, as well as the translation of pre-existing land-cover classifications. 2 Meeting in the Middle participants were provided with copiesofthesoftware,andmuchofthediscussionatthe workshop centred on the participants’ assessments of the degree to which LCCS enabled the recording of the kinds of information they might typically use in local or regional land-use and cover change studies, and the extent to which it might facilitate harmonization. ARTICLE IN PRESS 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65 67 69 71 73 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 3B2v7:51c GML4:3:1 JLUP : 315 Prod:Type: COM pp:123ðcol:fig::NILÞ ED: S N Reddy PAGN: seetharama SCAN: NIL E-mail address: focus1@indiana.edu (W. McConnell). 1 The workshop was hosted by the Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit of the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Space Applications Institute, with support from the US National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Land Cover and Land Use Change Project and Indiana University’s Office of Research and Graduate School. Participants included representatives of a dozen LUCC Endorsed Projects, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s Sustainable Development Depart- ment and Africover Project, the US Geological Survey, and the European Environment Agency’s Topic Centre on Land Cover. 2 CopiesoftheLandCoverClassificationSystemsoftwareanduser’s manual can be obtained from the Africover Project (e-mail: emailto:info@africover.org;onthewebat: http://www.lccs-info.org/). 0264-8377/01/$-see front matter r 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. PII:S0264-8377(01)00042-4