The social-ecological systems (SESs) and land-use land-cover change (LULCC) research
programs represent two responses to our need to understand the complexity of humanenvironment interactions that are driving change at a global level. SESs research has, however, struggled to find ways to quantify broad-scale system processes, while LULCC research has been unable to express its patterns of change in a way that allows cross-site comparison. This dissertation argues that complex adaptive systems (CASs) theory can be used to link SESs and LULCC research. It shows that LULCC, when considered as the tangible expression of an SES, presents an opportunity to measure and quantify the effect of system processes. CASs theory, as used in SESs research, provides the abstraction necessary for extrapolating and predicting LULCC, even in highly dissimilar systems. The concept of diversity, among other CAS characteristics, can be applied to LULCC, allowing systems to be represented as landscapes of land-use land-cover (LULC) diversity, which can then be mapped, measured and contrasted in different study sites.