Dear colleagues and friends,

       We are pleased to invite you to submit an abstract to the Pre-IGU 2016 Conference Workshop — Land Use and Rural Sustainability that will be held in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China on August 17-20, 2016, under the auspices of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Social Science Foundation of China. The workshop will be co-organized by the following organizations: Institue of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Key Laboratory of Degraded and Unused Land Consolidation Engineering, The Ministry of Land and Resources of China; Beijing Normal University; Shaanxi Normal University; the journal Land Use Policy (published by Elsevier); and the Department of Geography, Environment and Population, University of Adelaide.

      Land conversion from its natural state to human use is often an irreversible effect of human interaction with the natural environment. The transformation of human socio-economic activities exerts further impacts on land-use change and associated policy making, especially in developing countries over recent decades. As the most populous nation, China has undergone rapid and intense socio-economic transformations during recent decades, a process that has been accompanied by rapid land-use changes and modifications affecting all sectors of the country’s economy. In the meantime, urbanization has also had profound impacts on rural areas, which have witnessed depopulation, farmland loss, abandoned residential land, ‘hollowed villages’, environmental problems and declining development capability. Key questions arising are: How to revitalize the decaying villages? How to further improve land use productivity whilst achieving more sustainable development? How to implement rural restructuring and improve rural transformational development? What are the connections between land use and rural development? What experiences from other parts of the world can be applied in China?

       The workshop intends to analyze land use and rural sustainability from both a Chinese and a global perspective, covering the following themes:

Theme 1. Key issues of land use and sustainability

       Focus on land use problems, environmental pressures and policy challenges toward land use sustainability

Theme 2. Urbanization and farmland protection

Focus on the process of rapid urbanization and how farmland can be protected

Theme 3. Rural transforamtion and reconstruction

       Focus on the process, response and mechanisms of rural transformation and reconstruction, and the consolidation of ‘hollowed villages’

Theme 4. Urban-rural interaction in a changing society

       Focus on how urban and rural areas interact with each other in the face of rapid change

Theme 5. Land resources engineering and land use policy

       Focus on land consolidation experiences in improving land use efficiency and changing relationships between people and the land

We are happy to invite world-renowned scholars to share their ideas and reserach progress in the field of land use and rural sustainability.

An abstract of the paper should be submitted to liyuheng@igsnrr.ac.cn; yangyy@igsnrr.ac.cn by 20th April 2016.

Norms for abstract submission and biographic note of the paper’s authors/co-authors:

-Written in Word for Windows, A4 format

-Abstract: between 350 and 500 words

-Biographic note: maximum 250 words

-Arial 10 font; -1.5 line spacing

-Upper, lower and side margins—3 cm

-Title in bold capital letters

-3 to 5 keywords

Official languages: English

Full papers should be submitted by 20th June 2016. All papers are to be reviewed and selected papers will be recommended for publication review to Land Use Policy which will organize a special issue for this workshop.

The format of the full papers should follow the instructions of Land Use Policy.

http://www.elsevier.com/journals/land-use-policy/0264-8377/guide-for-authors

All participants will be invited to participate in an excursion to Yan’an city, Northern Shaanxi Province, where there is a Scientific Research Station of Ecology and Land Use (founded in 1996), and where the national key projects “Gully Land Consolidation” and “New-Mountain-City Construction” are being implemented to transform the Loess Plateau.

No registration fee is charged. But all participants need to pay for their travel and accommodation.

The workshop is initiated by the IGSNRR, CAS. It is also jointly organized by the School of Tourism and Environmental Sciences, Shaanxi Normal University. The convenors include:

Yansui Liu, Professor, College of Resources Science & Technology, Beijing Normal University; IGSNRR, CAS

Zhibao Dong, Professor, School of Tourism and Environmental Sciences, Shaanxi Normal University.

Hualou Long, Professor, IGSNRR, CAS

All inquiries, expressions of interests and abstracts should be sent, by e-mail to the secretaries of the organizing committee:

Yuheng Li, PhD

Associate Professor

IGSNRR, CAS

Address: No.11 of Datun Rd, Chaoyang District, 100101, Beijing, China

Tel: 86-10-64889034

E-mail: liyuheng@igsnrr.ac.cn

Yuanyuan Yang, PhD

Assistant Professor

IGSNRR, CAS

Address: No.11 of Datun Rd, Chaoyang District, 100101, Beijing, China

E-mail: yangyy@igsnrr.ac.cn

First-round announcement--LURS