Concepts used to describe, in general terms, spatial-temporal arrangements of agricultural and non-agricultural areas. Land sharing is a situation where farming practices enable biodiversity to be maintained within agricultural landscapes. Land sparing, also called land separation involves restoring or creating non-farmland habitat in agricultural landscapes at the expense of field-level agricultural production - for example, woodland, natural grassland, wetland, and meadow on arable land.

The large-scale acquisition of land (especially in developing countries), driven primarily by concerns about food and energy security of high-income countries and often executed by the private sector.

See ‘Large scale land acquisition'.

See ‘Grabbing (of wild species and space)’.

A state whereby the amount of healthy and productive land resources, necessary to support ecosystem services, remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales.

Refers to the many processes that drive the decline or loss in biodiversity, ecosystem functions or services and includes the degradation of all terrestrial ecosystems.

The surface cover on the ground, whether vegetation, urban infrastructure, water, bare soil or other. Identifying, delineating and mapping land cover is important for global monitoring studies, resource management, and planning activities. Identification of land cover establishes the baseline from which monitoring activities (change detection) can be performed, and provides the ground cover information for baseline thematic maps.

The physical coverage of land, usually expressed in terms of vegetation cover or lack of it. Related to, but not synonymous with, land use (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).

The observed (bio)physical cover on the earth's surface.

The physical coverage of land, usually expressed in terms of vegetation cover or lack of it. Related to, but not synonymous with, land use.