A set of broadly defined themes, related to land use by agriculture and forestry, constitute the common platform of the network:

• Interactions between the human and biophysical subsystems, as mediated by land use/cover change and agricultural intensification. This includes relations between human consumption and production patterns, bio-chemical cycles (including greenhouse gas emissions) and climate.
• Implications of global change in terms of costs and benefits of changes in ecosystem services, caused by global change. The role of institutions, economic incentives perceptions in bringing about mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
• Land use and environmental history approaches as a means to understanding the character of global (including climate) change processes and human adaptations to them.
• Methodological aspects and challenges of integrated use of multi-scale biophysical and social information and its use in models.

While individual Danish research groups have addressed these issues from their own disciplinary background, much additional progress could be obtained by bringing the research approaches and results together. This, it is believed, will enable the Danish research groups in a concerted effort to become a leading partner at the international level.