Patterns and causes of land change: Empirical results and conceptual considerations derived from a case study in the Swabian Alb, Germany

• We link conceptual and empirical approaches to land change.
• Forest expansion, urbanization and wasteland conversion were main change processes.
• A uniform driver at a superordinate scale translates into diversified local outcomes.
• This is due to varied natural conditions and human agency at the local level.
• Cross-site and cross-issue comparisons of this land change pattern are needed.

Land-use and land-cover change profoundly affect human well-being and, therefore, have become a major topic for society. A thorough understanding of past and present processes transforming landscapes is essential for guiding future developments toward the sustained provision of the ecosystem services humans critically depend upon. Drawing on the driving forces and resilience frameworks, we identify possible variables and patterns of land change, connecting them to empirical findings in three case study areas in the Swabian Alb region, southwestern Germany. GIS-based analysis of historical and contemporary maps from four time layers between the 1820s and 2009 reveals complex and spatially differentiated trajectories. Woodland expansion, marginal grass- and heathland conversion and expansion of urban areas were the main change processes affecting all case study areas. A literature review regarding causes of these changes points to socioeconomic drivers at the supraregional scale, playing themselves out in diverse ways on areas with contrasting natural site characteristics. Human agency also fosters the alteration of large-scale drivers of change at the local level. We conclude that policy and management strategies need to be particularly sensitive to natural site characteristics and take both driving forces and human agency into account. Landscape-scale studies of patterns and causes of land change, making cross-site and cross-issue comparisons, are necessary to test how far our insights may apply to other geographical contexts and land change processes.