Abandonment of arable land is often assumed to happen mostly in marginal areas where the conditions for arable cultivation are relatively unfavorable, whereas arable expansion is expected to occur mostly in areas with favorable conditions. This assumption, used in many land-use change forecasts, was never properly tested, mainly because the relatively short period of full-coverage land-use inventories did not allow a systematic analysis of the phenomena. With the recent release of CORINE 2006 this has changed. In this article, we explore the typical locations of abandonment and expansion of arable land in Europe during the period 1990–2006 by means of logistic regressions. More specifically, we test whether or not locations of abandonment and expansion can be inferred from the location characteristics of arable land in 1990. If the above assumption holds, this should be the case. We demonstrate that although arable expansion indeed happens in locations that resemble the bulk of arable land in 1990 (the presumably favorable locations), arable abandonment does not necessarily happen in locations that resemble the bulk of uncultivated land (that is, the presumably unfavorable locations). In other words, the assumption does not hold. Particularly, areas close to the road network were found to be associated with both high abandonment rates and high expansion rates, which suggest that abandonment is not limited to areas that are marginal in terms of agricultural production.

Soil erosion negatively affects crop yields and may have contributed to the collapse of ancient civilizations. Whether erosion may have such an impact on modern societies as well, is subject to debate. In this paper we quantify the relationship between crop yields and soil water available to plants, the most important yield-determining factor affected by erosion, at the European scale. Using information on the spatial distribution of erosion rates we calculate the potential threat of erosion-induced productivity losses. We show that future reductions in productivity in Europe as a whole are relatively small and do not pose a substantial threat to crop production within the coming century. However, within Europe there is considerable variability, and although productivity in northern Europe is not likely to be significantly reduced by soil erosion, for the southern countries the threat of erosion-induced productivity declines is stronger.

Land exchange can be a major factor driving land-use change in regions with high pressure on land, but is generally not incorporated in land-use change models. Here we present an agent-based model to simulate land-use change arising from land exchange between multiple agent types representing farmers, nature organizations, and estate owners. The RULEX model (Rural Land EXchange) was calibrated and applied to a 300 km² case study area in the east of the Netherlands. Decision rules about which actor will sell and buy land, as well as which specific land to buy or sell are based on historical observations, interviews, and choice experiments. A reconstruction of land-use change for the period 2001–2009 demonstrates that RULEX reproduces most observed land-use trends and patterns. Given that RULEX simulates only one mechanism of land-use change, i.e. land exchange, it is conservative in simulating change. With this model, we demonstrate the potential of incorporating land market processes in an agent-based, land-use change model. This supports understanding of land-use change that is brought about by ownership change, which is an important process in areas where pressure on land is high. The soundness of the process representation was corroborated by stakeholders within the study area. Land exchange models can be used to assess the impact of changes in climate, markets, and policy on land use change, and help to increase effectiveness of alternative land purchasing strategies by stakeholders or spatial planning policy.

Underrepresentation of women in senior positions is a persistent problem in universities worldwide, and a wide range of strategies to combat this situation is currently being contemplated. One such strategy is the introduction of a tenure track system, in which decisions to promote scientific staff to higher ranks are guided by a set of explicit and transparent criteria, as opposed to earlier situations in which decisions were based on presumably more subjective impressions by superiors. We examined the effect of the introduction of a tenure track system at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) on male and female promotion rates. We found that chances on being promoted to higher levels were already fairly equal between men and women before the tenure track system was introduced, and improved–more for women than for men–after the introduction of the tenure track system. These results may partly be explained by affirmative actions, but also by the fact that legacy effects of historical discrimination have led to a more competitive female population of scientists. In spite of these outcomes, extrapolations of current promotion rates up to 2025 demonstrate that the equal or even higher female promotion rates do not lead to substantial improvement of the gender balance at higher levels (i.e., associate professor and higher). Since promotion rates are small compared to the total amount of staff, the current distribution of men and women will, especially at higher levels, exhibit a considerable degree of inertia—unless additional affirmative action is taken.

In this article, the underlying causes for the apparent mismatch between land cover and land use in the context of wide-scale land change modelling are explored. A land use–land cover (LU/LC) ratio is proposed as a relevant landscape characteristic. The one-to-one ratio between land use and land cover is revoked by the multiple uses related to one cover type. The introduction of a secondary land use function next to the main primary function is relevant for the characterization of the resulting land cover. Secondary land use poses certain constraints to the productivity of the primary land use. Hence, the secondary land use has implicit land claims and requirements. We propose to relate the LU/LC ratio to the multi-functional nature of land cover, so that trade-off analyses between the primary use and the secondary use become possible. This will allow more realistic land cover projections in large-scale European land use assessment models.