Land Use Change, Impacts and Dynamics (LUCID)

The main objective of the network is to stimulate research on land use and global change in east Africa by bringing together experiences from different long term research sites to bear on common regional research themes associated with land degradation and conservation of biodiversity in the context of sustainable livelihoods.

The LUCID team has examined the socio-economic causes and consequences of land degradation and the biophysical systems that underlie changing patterns of land use within East Africa.

LUCID researchers are currently engaged in field studies, data collection and qualitative analysis, and modelling at a variety of scales (field, household, landscape, district, nation, region). They combine ground process knowledge and analytical skills to generalize processes of land-use change across broader scales and over a longer time periods.

The LUCID research network was created to respond to four strong needs: 

• to develop and strengthen an integrated, cross-site social and ecological understanding of land-use system dynamics at local and regional scales, primarily in East Africa,

• to link a wide group of researchers into an integrated research programme so that larger lessons could be learned from the integration of several long-term case studies,

• to develop and support the capacity of researchers and students working in East Africa in land use and global change issues.

• to work with policy makers at all levels (community, district, nation, region) to improve their understanding of how land-use is changing and discuss alternative scenarios for future change.