105

Global Land Project Sapporo Nodal Office Addressing
Land System Studies on Resilience,
Sustainability and Vulnerability in Asia
Teiji WATANABE1*, Hideaki SHIBATA2, Masae ISHIHARA2**,
Nobuhiko YOSHIMURA3 and Takashi KOHYAMA1
1

Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University
N10, W5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0810, Japan
2
Field Science Center for Northern Biosphere, Hokkaido University
N9, W9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0809, Japan
3
Rakuno Gakuen University
Bunkyo-dai, Ebetsu, 069-0836, Japan*e-mail: twata@ees.hokudai.ac.jp**Present address: Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation,
Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8529, Japan

Abstract
This article introduces a brief history, the objectives and structure of the Global Land Project (GLP), a
joint core project for facilitating land change sciences under the International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme (IGBP) and International Human Dimension Programme (IHDP). The major activities of the GLP
Sapporo Nodal Office, one of the four nodal offices worldwide, are also introduced. The article goes on tocharacterize land system studies on Asia and Asian countries/areas, viewing them through temporal trends inpublished academic articles. The results suggest that more studies on issues related to resilience and ecosystem services may be needed in Asia and Asian countries/areas. Finally, the future roles and prospects of landscience in Asia are discussed.
Key words: Asia, Future Earth, Global Land Project (GLP), land system science, resilience, sustainability,
vulnerability

1. Introduction
The earth supports more than seven billion people
today. The world’s historical populations have been estimated by various researchers. Kremer (2014), for example, estimated the world’s population from 1,000,000
B.C. to 1990. His list suggests that the population in
1,000,000 B.C. was about 0.125 million, increasing toabout 1 million in 300,000 B.C., 100 million in 500 B.C.,
425 million in 1500 A.D., 1,625 million in 1900 A.D.,and 5,333 million in 1990 A.D. Grigg (1974) estimatedthe number to be 5–10 million in 8,000 B.C. and about
500 million in 1600 A.D. Although differing estimates
are available, they all suggest a rapid increase in theworld’s population. Today, about 60% (4.3 billion) of theworld’s population (> seven billion) resides in Asia
(Population Division of the Department of Economic andSocial Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, 2013).
Human beings have expanded their territories fromthe beginning, with notable land development occurring
under the relatively mild climatic environment of the
Global Environmental Research
18/2014: 105-112
printed in Japan

Holocene. The beginning of agriculture roughly corresponds to the beginning of the Holocene. In Asia, ricecultivation started in an area along the middle reaches of
the Yangtze River, China more than 10,000 years ago(Yasuda, 2002). Since then, human activities have impacted more of the earth’s surface, by changing land use
toward agriculture. In this regard, it is important to understand changes in land use/land cover as well as theirimpacts on environments in Asia, which has 60% ofworld’s population.
Historical changes in cropland and pastureland at a
global scale during the last 300 years were estimated on
the basis of population data by Goldewijk (2001) andGoldewijk and Ramankutty (2004), indicating great
contributions of human beings to land-use changes globally, although the expansion of population, cropland andpastureland is only part of the scope of land systemscience.
Due to accelerated development, many mega-cities(population>1 million) have appeared in Asia, including
Tokyo, Guangzhou, Jakarta, Shanghai, Seoul, Delhi,©2014 AIRIES

106

T. WATANABE et al.

Karachi, Manila and Taipei. Ramankutty et al. (2002)
suggested that the greatest cropland expansion during the20th century occurred in South and Southeast Asia.
According to Lambin et al. (2003), about one-third(33%) of the world’s pastureland is located in Asia.
These figures indicate the importance of Asian land science. Population growth has not been accompanied by acorresponding increase in cropland expansion, partly
because increases in food production have been achievedby agricultural intensification and partly because
cropland expansion has not always occurred in the regions with the highest population growth (Braimoh &Vlek, 2008).
The growing population has naturally influenced theclimate, ecosystem functions and geochemical cycles ofland, as has been addressed by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and International
Human Dimension Programme (IHDP). Human beings
have induced substantial land-use changes (Reenberg,
2006). Half of the Earth’s land surface has been converted to direct human use, and most of the rest is
managed for human purposes (GLP, 2005). Nearly 40%of the ice-free land surface of the globe, all of which had
previously been covered with natural vegetation, is used
for agricultural activities (Ramankutty et al., 2008; Elliset al., 2010). Getting a grasp of the land system, which is
the terrestrial component of the earth system, is central tounderstanding the relationship between people and theirenvironment (Reenberg, 2006). The Global Land Project(GLP), a joint core project for studying land systems
under the IGBP and IHDP, was launched in 2006, basedon two preceding core projects, Global Change andTerrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE; 1992–2003) and Land
Use and Cover Change (LUCC; 1994–2005). The GCTE
focused on the response and feedback of land-ecosystem
functions to climatic environmental change, mainly
based on ecological science, whereas the LUCC focusedon the dynamics of terrestrial landscapes in response tohuman land use, based mainly on geography and land-use
science. The GLP was set up based on the legacy of these,
recognizing the necessity for an integrated science,
which would investigate how human activities on land
affect feedback to the earth system and the response of
the human-environment system to global change (GLP,2005). The International Project Office (IPO) of the GLP,
together with the four nodal offices, addresses land system sciences under changing global environments(http://www.globallandproject.org/). Each nodal officehas its own focuses and tasks in dealing with land system
studies associated with the GLP, as will be describedlater.
This article introduces the GLP Sapporo Nodal
Office’s way of addressing land system studies on resilience, sustainability and vulnerability in Asia. The GLP
Sapporo Nodal Office does not serve to promote landscience in Asia alone; but Asia, with a large portion of theworld’s population and food production, is one of themost important regions regarding global sustainability inthe future. Accordingly, understanding state-of-art stud-

ies in Asia will provide a basis for synthesizing global
issues.

2. Roles and Significance of the GLP
2.1 History and objectives of the GLPThe GCTE and LUCC, both of which were IGBP core
projects, were launched in 1992 and 1994, and terminated in 2003 and 2005, respectively. While the GCTE
addressed the main questions of how global change
would affect terrestrial ecosystems, and what the feedbacks to the physical climate system would be, the LUCC
aimed to obtain a better understanding of land-use andland-cover changes, such as degradation, desertification
and biodiversity loss, and of the physical and humandriving forces behind these processes (Turner et al.,1990). The research planning of the GLP was built not
only on the extensive heritage of the IGBP’s global networks of scientists, data and largely disciplinary understanding, but also on the GCTE and LUCC projects.
The GLP science plan and implementation strategy
was published by the GLP transition team, which took
over from the former GCTE and LUCC programs, in thecontext of land system science (GLP, 2005). The overall
goal of the GLP is to measure, model and understand thecoupled human-environmental system under a changing
environment. The GLP has three objectives to its research framework: (1) to identify the agents, structuresand nature of change in coupled human-environment
systems on land, and to quantify their effects on the coupled system; (2) to assess how the provision of ecosystemservices is affected by the changes in (1) above; and (3)to identify the character and dynamics of vulnerable andsustainable coupled human-environment systems tointeracting perturbations, including climate change (GLP,2005). The GLP has three major focal topics: (1)dynamics of land system change; (2) consequences ofland system change; and (3) integrating analyses andmodelling for land sustainability. The GLP was designed
to facilitate those kinds of research through various
activities such as promoting academic publications,organizing scientific meetings and workshops, networking among scientists and existing research programs/
networks, and providing educational programs, tools andmaterials.
Human Interactions in Past Environmental Changes(PAGES), a core IGBP project, focuses on longer-term
issues; Human Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems(HITE), one of the focuses of PAGES, for example,
concentrates on man-made land-cover conversions overthe last 300 years (Goldewijk, 2001). On the other hand,
the GLP’s main initial interests have been on shorterterm issues with some interests spanning 2–3 centuries,
although its current coverage seems to become much
longer: e.g., one recent GLP study, Ellis et al. (2013),
synthesized long-term global land changes starting morethan 3,000 years ago, and the demarcation line between
the GLP and some of the other projects/focuses might beminimal.

Global Land Project Sapporo Nodal Office Addressing Land System Studies on Resilience

2.2 Structure of the GLP
There are four GLP nodal offices worldwide: Sapporo,
Beijing, Taipei and Europe (Table 1). The former three
offices are based at single organizations (Hokkaido
University, the Institute of Geographic Sciences andNatural Resources of the Chinese Academy of Science,and National Taiwan University), while the European
GLP Nodal Office is based at a partner platform, theEuropean Land Use Institute (ELI), which is coordinatedat and currently hosted by the Center for Development
Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. As mentioned earlier, these four nodal offices assist the GLP’s IPO, which
had been housed at the University of Copenhagen from2006 to 2011, and which is currently hosted by the
National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacionalde Pesquisas Espaciais: INPE) in Brazil. The IPO performs the central coordinative, organizational and communicative functions of the GLP. The UK previously had
a nodal office in Aberdeen which focused on integrationand modelling (Stannard & Aspinall, 2011). Unfortunately, the office was closed in 2011 after a major
restructuring of the host institution.
Not only the IPO but also the four GLP Nodal offices
are strongly tied with the GLP Scientific Steering
Committee (SSC), which is composed of about 20 experts internationally. All GLP Nodal offices regularly
report on their annual activities at the SSC meeting.
Each nodal office provides infrastructural, personnel
and scientific input and support in the process of implementing the GLP Science Plan. The Sapporo Nodal
Office (http://www.glp.hokudai.ac.jp/jp/), established in
November 2006, has thematic focuses of resilience,sustainability and vulnerability of land systems (Table 1).
Vulnerability of coupled human-environment systems isa major element of sustainability research. Vulnerability
not only results from exposure to biophysical and social
perturbations, but also resides in the sensitivity andadaptive capacity of the system experiencing such
stresses. Thus, the overall goal of the Sapporo Nodal
Office is to improve understanding of the causal processes of vulnerability, the quality of coping capacities
linked to different perturbations, and the role of governance in bolstering resilience (Watanabe & Ishihara, 2012).
Table 1 Thematic focus of the GLP Nodal offices worldwide(as of 2014).
Establishedyear

Officelocation

SapporoBeijing

TaipeiEurope

2006

2007

2012

2012

National Taiwan
Univ.,
Taipei, Taiwan

European Land-use
Institute (ELI)
Center for Development
Research (ZEF),
Univ. of Bonn, Germany

Hokkaido
Chinese Academy
Univ., Sapporo,of Science,Japan
Beijing, China

Vulnerability,
Thematic resilience, andfocus
sustainability ofland systems

Land use andecosystem
interactions

Nature of socialecological linkages
and their implications
for the resilience ofland systems atvarious sales

Land management,
land use planningand land use
policies

http://www.glp.
hokudai.ac.jp

http://www.
glp-beijing.
org.cn/http://www.glp.
taipei.ntu.edu.tw/

http://europeannodaloffice.
eli-web.com/

URL

107

2.3 Major activities of the GLP Sapporo Nodal Office
To fulfill its overall goal, the GLP Sapporo Nodal
Office has organized/co-organized symposiums, conferences and workshops, which include the International
Workshop ‘Life history regulation of forest trees: towards cross-biome analysis,’ held in Sapporo, September
2-3, 2011; the Annual Meeting of the International
Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER), in Sapporo,
September 5-9, 2011; the GLP Open Workshop‘Vulnerability, Resilience and Sustainability of AsianLand Systems,’ in Sapporo, November 5, 2011; the Public Forum ‘Glacier Changes and Disaster: Himalayan
Perspectives on Global Warming,’ in Sapporo, November 6, 2011; and the International Symposium ‘Changing
Mountain Environments in Asia: Vulnerability, resilience and sustainability of land system in Asian mountains,’ in Kathmandu, October 7-11, 2012. The nodal
office also has contributed to events organized by othernodal offices, such as one organized by the Taipei Nodal
Office, the ‘GLP Asia Conference 2014,’ in Taipei, September 24-26, 2014, to which it contributed as aco-organizer.
The Sapporo Nodal Office has also organized international summer/winter schools to foster education onland system sciences for the younger generation ofuniversity students (from undergraduate to PhD) andpost-doctoral fellows. The International Summer School
2011 ‘Understanding coupled natural and social systems:
Feedback loops between land-use and ecosystem change’
was held from June 27 to July 8, with 18 PhD students
from 13 countries. The International Summer School2012 was held from June 25 to July 3, and the International Winter School 2014 ‘Changing land systems:
Training course of ecological monitoring, advanced
modeling and integration’ was held from January 8 to 10
with 26 students and 12 faculty members. These summer/winter schools provided opportunities for students tolearn about field research and the analytical methods ofland system sciences and environmental science. One ofthe outcomes from these activities led to the publicationof a report on the sustainable development of Samani
Town in Hokkaido, Japan, by the graduate students
participating in one of the summer/winter schools(Dublin et al., 2013).
Publication of books and reports is another effort (e.g.,
Braimoh & Huang, 2014). The nodal office launched a
new online newsletter in March 2014 (http://www.glp.
hokudai.ac.jp/uploads_en/Newsletter1Eng.pdf), which
introduces the latest research related to the nodal office(Shiodera et al., 2014).

3. Asian Land System Studies
3.1 Asian land system studies
To understand the state of land system studies, especially in Asia, trends in the numbers of articles on landscience focusing on resilience, sustainability, vulnerability and ecosystem services were examined using the Webof Science search service (accessed on October 28, 2014;

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T. WATANABE et al.

Fig. 1). Three of these themes (resilience, sustainability
and vulnerability) are the focuses of the Sapporo Nodal
Office (Table 1), and ecosystem services is the mostimportant additional focus of the nodal office. A search
was performed among articles published in journals forthe following combinations of words in their titles, keywords or abstract:
1. (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND (‘Asia’ OR the names ofAsian countries/areas) AND ‘resilience,’
2. (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND (‘Asia’ OR the names ofAsian countries/areas) AND ‘sustainability,’
3. (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND (‘Asia’ OR the names ofAsian countries/areas) AND ‘vulnerability,’ and4. (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND (‘Asia’ OR the names ofAsian countries/areas) AND (‘ecosystem service’ OR‘ecosystem services’).
We followed UN classification to identify countries/
areas in Asia, so the examined countries/areas included
those in West Asia but excluded Russia. In addition, we
also searched for articles by excluding “(‘Asia’ OR thenames of Asian countries/areas)” to find land science
articles on all countries/areas, regions, and the globe
including Asia. Land science covers coastal areas/regions,but the retrieved data observed only small numbers ofarticles on these areas/regions, so the actual number ofland science articles is even larger than that presented
here.
We found a total of 10,862 articles on all countries/

areas, regions, and globe published in 1,531 journals ofdifferent disciplines spanning scales from local andlandscape to global, and covering fields from naturalsciences to social sciences. Table 2 summarizes the top
30 journals. The articles focusing on resilience, sustainability or ecosystem services tended to be published morein journals such as Ecological Economics, Agriculture
Ecosystems Environment, Ecology and Society, Environmental Management, and Landscape and Urban
Planning, while the articles focusing on vulnerability
tended to be published more in different journals whosethematic focus was on natural hazards or global environmental change. Even Ecological Economics, thejournal with the largest share, published only 2.1% of thetotal number of articles. These results suggest that landscience covers diversified disciplines.
Figure 1 shows the number of land science articles onresilience, sustainability, vulnerability and ecosystemservices in all countries and in Asia and Asian countries/areas. It is clear that the number of articles publishedeach year has increased. This increase has accelerated
since the middle of the 2000s, especially in articles focusing on ecosystem services (Fig. 1-D). This may be due tothe Millennium Ecosystem Assessment conducted from2001 to 2005. In 2013, the number of articles on ecosystem services exceeded 600.
More articles on sustainability have been publishedthan on the other thematic focuses until 2012 (Fig. 1-B).

Fig. 1 The number of the published land science articles on Asia and on all countries/areas,regions and the globe including Asia.
A search was executed to find numbers of the articles by applying the following words as search parameters among
titles, key words and abstracts of articles published by 2013, using the Web of Science search service:
A: (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND ‘resilience’,
B: (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND ‘sustainability’,
C: (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND ‘vulnerability’,
D: (‘land’ OR ‘terrestrial’) AND ‘ecosystem service(s)’.
For land science articles on Asia, (‘Asia’ OR ‘the names of Asian countries/areas’) was added to the searchparameters. Asian countries/area are based on the UN classification.

Global Land Project Sapporo Nodal Office Addressing Land System Studies on Resilience

The number jumped from about 200 in 2006 to about 300
in 2007. This increase was not due to the publication of
special issues in any journals. The annual publication
continuously increased reaching more than 600 in 2013.
Three journals, Ecology and Society, Forest Ecology andManagement, and PLOS ONE tended to carry more
articles on resilience (Table 2). The number of articles onsustainability in Asia and Asian countries/areas was also
larger than that of articles on other thematic focuses. On
the other hand, there have been fewer articles on resilience compared to those on the other thematic focusessince the early 2000s both globally and for Asia
(Fig. 1-A).
The proportion of published land science articles on
Asia to those on all countries/areas, regions or the globe
increased during 2001 and 2012 (Fig. 2), suggesting
increased interest in land science in Asia. The exception
was articles on ecosystem services. The proportion of
Asian papers that focused on ecosystem services did notincrease during this period. This result coincides with a

109

Fig. 2 Proportion of published land science articles on Asia or
Asian countries/areas among those on all countries/areas,regions and the globe.
The articles were searched for using the Web of Science. *** P < 0.001,** P < 0.005, ns: not significant by the linear regression of the moving
average of the proportion (three years) to the published year.

Table 2 Top 30 journals that have carried land science articles as of 2013.
Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Journal

Number of published articles*
Resilience

Sustainability

Vulnerability

Ecosystem
services
95
64
66
62
67
51
58
54
52

Total

Ecological Economics
15
109
12
231
Agriculture Ecosystems Environment
17
124
23
228
Ecology and Society
61
47
15
189
Environmental Management
14
66
29
171
Landscape and Urban Planning
19
58
22
166
Land Use Policy
13
92
8
164
Journal of Environmental Management
4
76
25
163
Forest Ecology and Management
24
65
19
162
Biological Conservation
15
31
42
140
Proceedings of the National Academy of
10
16
33
21
52
122
Sciences of the United States of America
11
Ecological Indicators
6
45
12
52
115
12
Ecological Applications
8
28
17
60
113
13
PLOS ONE
22
16
21
45
104
Global Environmental Change Human
14
20
25
32
19
96
and Policy Dimensions
15
Land Degradation Development
10
54
13
14
91
16
Landscape Ecology
11
33
12
34
90
Environmental Monitoring and
17
3
25
38
23
89
Assessment
18
Journal of Applied Ecology
13
17
8
50
88
19
Conservation Biology
8
19
21
32
80
International Journal of Sustainable
20
4
56
8
12
80
Development and World Ecology
21
Agricultural Systems
3
63
4
8
78
22
Ecological Modelling
17
29
8
24
78
23
Climatic Change
14
7
46
10
77
24
Global Change Biology
16
14
20
24
74
25
Biodiversity and Conservation
11
13
21
28
73
26
Natural Hazards
7
2
59
3
71
27
Agroforestry Systems
5
49
1
14
69
28
Applied Geography
7
19
24
18
68
29
Journal of Sustainable Agriculture
3
58
1
4
66
30
Biomass Bioenergy
2
59
2
3
66
Total
388
1,332
584
1,098
3,402
*: The number of published articles with the following words in either the title, key words or abstract in journals in the Web of Science searchservice: (land or terrestrial) and (Asia or country names in Asia) and (resilience or sustainability or vulnerability or ecosystem service).

110

T. WATANABE et al.

review paper by Schägner et al. (2013), who showed that
there were few case studies of ecosystem service mapping in Asia if China was excluded. Another notable
trend in Asian land science is that resilience is lessfocused on than sustainability or vulnerability. As of theaverage of 2011–2013, the proportion of articles onsustainability or vulnerability in Asia and Asian countries/areas exceeds 25%, while that of articles on resilience or ecosystem services reaches about 15% (Fig. 2).
Therefore, resilience and ecosystem services may need to
be studied more in the GLP’s Asian framework.
3.2 The GLP’s endorsed research and endorsed
networks
The GLP has five endorsement criteria, by which
individuals, groups and institutions are encouraged toparticipate in GLP-related studies and communities: (1)research projects, (2) PhD projects, (3) research networks,(4) research institutions and (5) events. Research projects
and research networks are briefly examined below.
Endorsed research projects are those of special relevance to the land science community and addressing the
GLP research challenges outlined in the GLP Science
Plan (GLP, 2005). More than 50 endorsed research projects are listed on the GLP website. Among the projects,
many consider global issues, which include the Asian
region, and at least 18 projects target Asian countries/
areas.
Endorsed networks are research networks related to
the land science community. Twelve endorsed networks
are currently listed on the GLP’s website. These endorsed
networks do not aim for Asia, but are global networks:
nevertheless, many activities are performed in Asia. For
example, the ILTER network is one of the GLP’s endorsed networks, focusing on site-based long-term socioecological research (Vihervaara et al., 2013). The research groups in ILTER recently synthesized current
understandings and future research needs in the context
of nitrogen biogeochemistry in coupled human andecological systems under climate change (Shibata et al.,2014).

4. Future Roles/Perspectives of Land Sciencein Asia: the GLP as a Future Earth Joint
Project in the Next 10 Years
As there has been rapid population growth andexpansion of cropland and pastureland in South, Southeast and East Asia since 1700 (Fig. 3), it is expected that
Asia will continue to have rapid increases in populationand food production, structural changes in its economy
and vast land-use changes during coming decades (e.g.,
Ellis et al., 2010). This suggests GLP research is important and valuable for the Asian region not only toobtain regional findings but also to contribute scientifically to regional and global governance to achieve futuresustainability. A large spatial gradient and heterogeneityof natural and social changes are also unique characteristics of Asian land systems, providing useful case-study
areas for examining how those drivers alter the functions
and services of coupled social and ecological systems.
For example, Japan will face aging and shrinking of its
population during the coming couple of decades, suggesting that those societal changes will alter the country’s
land-use patterns including human residence, which may
affect ecosystem services and other environmental
parameters in the future. Understanding and predicting
those socio-environmental dynamics would contributenot only regarding Asian regional aspects, but also
regarding other regions, where similar problems willarise in the near future. Thus, the GLP’s Asian research
can produce good examples for implementing dynamic
land system science under changing natural and anthropogenic perturbations (GLP, 2005). More integrationand collaboration will be necessary to make those research programs feasible.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) takes
the view that sustainable provision of goods and services
depends critically on managing land resources without
damaging the natural resource base. Our understandingof land systems has been deepened in the last few decades (Reenberg, 2006; Rounsevell et al., 2012). The
future of land system science, however, strongly depends

Fig. 3 Historical estimates of population (A), cropland (B), and pasturage (C) from 1700 to 1990 (data compiled from Goldewijk,
2001). The population is given in millions, and cropland and pasturage are in Mha. This is a product of one of the GLP’s
endorsed research projects.

Global Land Project Sapporo Nodal Office Addressing Land System Studies on Resilienceon the research community’s capacity (Rounsevell et al.,2012). Further efforts under an international researchframework are important, and the GLP should be one of
the research communities taking the lead.
The GLP is now going to transit to a new program –Future Earth1), a research platform on global sustainability (http://www.icsu.org/future-earth). Future Earth,funded by the International Council for Science (ICSU),
is a global joint research program with transdisciplinary
approaches for creating scientific knowledge and solutions for sustainable societies and environments by following the previous global environmental programs andpartnerships (i.e., Earth System Science Partnership:
ESSP, IGBP, IHDP, World Climate Research Programme: WCRP and DIVERSITAS). The overall
research framework and direction of Future Earth and the
GLP are strongly linked and largely overlap with eachother in the context of sustainability research in couplednatural and human systems, meaning that the GLP has agreat potential to lead Future Earth and contribute to it
through the GLP’s endorsed projects, various academic
publications, meetings and educational programs. The
Asian region, in particular, as one of the most dynamic,
intensely active regions regarding land systems, will be
an exciting and important research arena for understanding regional and global resilience, sustainability andvulnerability, which are central focal topics of the GLP
Sapporo Nodal Office.

5. Conclusions
The GPL, a joint core project to facilitate land change
sciences under the IGBP and IHDP, promotes academic
publications, organizes scientific meetings and workshops, scientist networks and existing research programs,
and provides educational programs, tools and materials.
Since 2006, the GLP Sapporo Nodal Office, one of
the four nodal offices worldwide, has organized/coorganized international symposiums, conferences andworkshops; organized international summer and winterschools; and published books, reports and an online
newsletter.
Among these activities, the international summer andwinter schools for younger generations provide an important base for educational tools.
The Sapporo Nodal Office does not address regional
issues of Asia, but thematic issues worldwide, withresilience, sustainability and vulnerability as its three key
thematic words. Nevertheless, Asian issues are among its
major concerns, not because of its geographical location
but because of the importance of the explosive growth of
population and land-use/land-cover changes.
To understand the state of land system studies, especially in Asia, the number of articles on land science that
focused on the three thematic topics (resilience, sustainability and vulnerability), together with ecosystem services, an additional key focus, was examined using the
Web of Science search service. In total 10,862 articles
were identified in 1,531 journals. The number of pub-111

lished articles on the four thematic topics has increased at
all spatial levels especially since around 2000. Amongthese published articles, resilience has been focused onless often than vulnerability or sustainability in Asia.
Studies on ecosystem services have been rather limited in
Asia. Therefore, resilience and ecosystem services mayneed to be studied more in Asian land science.
The GLP is in a transitional phase to a new program,
Future Earth. The GLP has great potential to lead Future
Earth and contribute to it through the GLP’s endorsed
projects, various academic publications, meetings andeducational programs, because of the strong links andlarge overlaps of the overall research framework anddirections of Future Earth and the GLP. The Asian region,
one of the most dynamic, intensely active regions forland systems, will be an exciting and important research
arena for understanding regional and global resilience,sustainability and vulnerability, which are central focal
topics of the GLP Sapporo Nodal Office.
Note
1)

Future Earth is a global research platform providing knowledge
and support to accelerate our transformation to a sustainable
world (www://futureearth.org). Being tied with existing
programs on global environmental change such as the IGBP,IHDP and WCRP, Future Earth will be an international hub tocoordinate new interdisciplinary approaches to research on
three themes: dynamic planet, global sustainable development,
and transformations towards sustainability. It will also be aplatform for international engagement to ensure that knowledge
is generated in partnership with society and users of science. It
is open to scientists of all disciplines, natural and social, as wellas engineering, the humanities and law.

Acknowledgements
We thank Distinguished Prof. Dr. Yu-Pin Lin of
National Taiwan University, director general of the GLP
Taipei Nodal Office, and Dr. Kikuko Shoyama of the
National Institute for Environmental Studies, for valuable comments that helped improve our manuscript.
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Postscript
After acceptance of the maniscript, two more nodal offices
jointed the GLP: Latin American Nodal Office in Argentina andWest Africa Nodal Office in Côte d’Ivoire.
Teiji WATANABE
Teiji WATANABE is a professor of the Faculty ofEnvironmental Earth Science and the Graduate
School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido
University. Having a background in alpine geomorphology, he specializes in mountain geoecology, with interests in interaction of humangeo-ecosystems in high mountain areas and natural resource managementin protected areas. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Himalayas,
the Karakorums, the Alps, the Pamirs, and Japanese mountains.

Hideaki SHIBATA
Hideaki SHIBATA is currently a professor at theField Science Center for Northern Biosphere at
Hokkaido University. His research interests
include biogeochemistry, soil science, ecosystem
ecology and land change sciences under naturaland anthropogenic disturbances.

Masae ISHIHARA
Masae ISHIHARA is a tenure-track associate professor of the Graduate School for International
Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University. She worked as a post-doctorate researcher at the Sapporo Nodal Office of the
Global Land Project and Hokkaido University
during 2012–2014. She is a forest ecologist
interested in a wide variety of topics such as mechanisms of plant
reproduction and growth, estimation of forest productivity, processes andmechanisms that determine tree species diversity and ecosystem functions,and ecosystem services. In addition to long-term fieldwork in Japanese
forests, she has specialized in analyzing and compiling large datasets fromdifferent forests. She, together with many collaborators, has publishedthese datasets as peer-reviewed data papers.

Nobuhiko YOSHIMURA
Nobuhiko YOSHIMURA is a researcher at the
Department of Environmental and Symbiotic
Sciences, Rakuno Gakuen University. His background is in geographic information science, andhe applies GIS, GPS and remote sensing technologies to improve the efficiency and efficacy ofmanagement, especially in the environmental,
forest, tourism and agricultural sectors. He has worked as an intermediarysupporter of NGOs at the Environmental Partnership Office (EPO)
organized by the Ministry of the Environment. As a researcher andcoordinator, he strives to improve natural resource management.

Takashi KOHYAMA
Takashi S. KOHYAMA has been a professor of
terrestrial ecology at the Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University,
Sapporo, since 1994. His main research fields areplant ecology and terrestrial ecology. He isparticularly interested in tree community processes in natural forest ecosystems, focusing
upon forest inventory, theoretical analysis and simulation. He was amember of the Science Committee of the IGBP (2001–2007) and anaffiliate member of the Science Council of Japan (1993–2014). He
received his PhD in science from Kyoto University in 1983.

(Received 4 November 2014, Accepted 27 November 2014)