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Land is a natural resource that humans have utilized for life and various activities. Land use/land cover change (LULCC) has been of great concern to many countries over the years. Some of the main reasons behind LULCC are rapid population growth, migration, and the conversion of rural to urban areas. LULC has a considerable impact on the land-atmosphere/climate interactions. Over the past two decades, numerous studies conducted in LULC have investigated various areas of the field of LULC. However, the assemblage of information is missing for some aspects. Therefore, to provide coherent guidance, a literature review to scrutinize and evaluate many studies in particular topical areas is employed. This research study collected approximately four hundred research articles and investigated five (5) areas of interest, including (1) LULC definitions; (2) classification systems used to classify LULC globally; (3) direct and indirect changes of meta-studies associated with LULC; (4) challenges associated with LULC; and (5) LULC knowledge gaps. The synthesis revealed that LULC definitions carried vital terms, and classification systems for LULC are at the national, regional, and global scales. Most meta-studies for LULC were in the categories of direct and indirect land changes. Additionally, the analysis showed significant areas of LULC challenges were data consistency and quality. The knowledge gaps highlighted a fall in the categories of ecosystem services, forestry, and data/image modeling in LULC. Core findings exhibit common patterns, discrepancies, and relationships from the multiple studies. While literature review as a tool showed similarities among various research studies, our results recommend researchers endeavor to perform further synthesis in the field of LULC to promote our overall understanding, since research investigations will continue in LULC.
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This content will become publicly available on February 3, 2026
Land-use and land-cover changes and emerging non-tuberculous and tuberculous infectious diseases in humans and animals: a mixed-methods review of research findings from global and spatio-temporal perspectives
Despite recent interest in land-use and land-cover (LULC) change effects on emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), the debate on global potential health threats remains polarizing. These depend on diverse LULC changes, different types of infectious disease systems, and spatio-temporal scales of studies. Here, using both a bibliometric and scoping review method, we summarize the reliability and availability of published relevant studies on LULC effects on mycobacteria, an important group of infectious bacteria that affect humans and both wild and domestic animals. We make connections of LULC with environmental changes (e.g. soils) that likely lead to an increased risk of mycobacteria spillover to human and other animal populations. An important feature of our review is a focus on research from the richest countries of the world, though some studies have been done in Africa, Asia and South America. Geographically, regions experiencing important LULC transformations, such as many tropical regions of Meso- and South America and Southeast Asia, have been given little or no attention in this important topic. Research onMycobacterium bovis,and to a larger extent onM. ulcerans,constitutes convincing illustrations of the importance of acknowledging shifts in spatio-temporal scales, from local to global and inter-annual to decadal ones, when evaluating responses of mycobacteria to LULC changes. However, studies on other pathogenic mycobacteria remain very much confined to local and dispersed scales. To date, the role of LULC change effects has not been adequately studied for many human and animal pathogens, and more research and attention to this issue is clearly needed. This review provides a comprehensive set of data on the updates of LULC change and their impact on animal and human mycobacterial infections. It also proposes several research recommendations, in particular to better understand the emergence of mycobacteria in context, by multiplying study sites in different regions of the world and in adopting an ecosystem-based perspective, in order to encourage interdisciplinary research better linking environmental microbiology, veterinary science and medical research.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1911457
- PAR ID:
- 10642132
- Publisher / Repository:
- IOP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research: Health
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2752-5309
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 012003
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Buruli ulcer
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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