摘要：Since pre-historic times marked environmental changes are going on in association with changing pattern of economy, society, culture and civilization. Multifaceted changes, transformation and conversions are the results of multi level pressures on ecosystems and the human dimensions of global environmental changes happen through a sub-set of multi-level driving forces which directly or indirectly alter aspects of the physical, economic, social and cultural environment in ways that have global as well as regional effects. The triggering forces for land use and cover changes may be bio-physical, technological, organizational and economical in nature. Land use and land cover change offers significant association with the functioning of socioeconomic and environmental systems with important tradeoffs for sustainability, food security, biodiversity and the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to global change impacts. In terms of human dimension of land use change it has been ascertained that the globe is underlying a transformation from predominantly rural centric to urban society. In the last part of the 20th century the land has been mostly degraded with the increment of irrigated area around the world especially for meeting the demand of the huge population. The driving forces and crux of land use change may be sub-divided into two categories. - i) Direct or Proximate causes; ii) Indirect and root (inherent) causes. Proximate causes of land use change are primarily local and constitute instant human activities or immediate actions that originate from intended land use and physical actions that directly affect land cover; In contrast, underlying or root causes are fundamental forces, may originate from the regional or even global. However, most of those basic drivers leading to land use modification are usually endogenous, although they may also be influenced by exogenous factors as well. However, it is to be concluded that the whole biosphere, ecosphere and global system mechanism are directly affected by land use and land cover changes through bio-geo-physical, bio-geo-chemical and energy transformation processes.
