Please note e-mail address, above. In situations where the linkage between land cover and an ecological response is direct, or when a sound model links land cover or land use to ecological responses, they can serve as ecological variables. However, without such a mechanistic connection they must be considered to be promising exploratory factors. Land Use and Land Cover Land use is a description of how a parcel of land is employed by people, or the degree to which that land reflects natural versus human-generated cover. Land cover is a closely related concept, which more readily describes the natural and human surfaces or structures that blanket the Earth.
Land cover is the more general variable, and land use is more specific.
The two variables are not redundant, because a given land cover type may be used in more than one way. Land use and land cover are often characterized using remote sensing with subsequent confirmation by surveys on the ground or in private or public records. For instance, residential land cover can sometimes be broken down in to high and low densities, but many suburban developments may look, from high altitudes or using a few satellite bands, like a closed canopy forest. Hence land cover, and especially land use are not always easy parameters to measure. The covers of the Earth's surface are, in fact, complex, three dimensional bodies, rather than a simple layer that is draped over the geomorphology.