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[Objective] Sustainable Development Goal 15.3.1 (SDG 15.3.1) is one of the important indicators to characterize land degradation.Exploring the impact of land use change and ecosystem service values (ESVs) on SDG 15.3.1 is a key factor to improve land degradation. [Methods] Based on land use and carbon stock changes, a new evaluation rule was established for SDG15.3.1 index, and the completion of SDG 15.3.1 was evaluated. The equivalent factor method was used to calculate the value of ecosystem services to quantitatively analyse the impact of land use change on ESV. [Results] (1) The land use type change was frequent in the study area, which mainly showed that high forest land, water body and construction land increased, cultivated land, grassland and shrub decreased, and unused land remained basically unchanged; (2) The spatial distribution pattern of ESV was high in the middle, low arround, high in the west and low in the east; From 2000 to 2020, the total ESV loss was 7.32×108 yuan. From 2000 to 2010, the ESV loss of land degradation area was 3.03×109 yuan. From 2010 to 2020, the ESV loss in land degradation areas was 2.28×109 yuan. (3) According to the evaluation results of SDG15.3.1, the indicators of SDG15.3.1 for 2000—2010 and 2010—2020 are 5.22 percent and 4.77 percent, respectively, while the net land restoration area was -1.62×105 hm2 and -2.4×105 hm2. The SDG15.3.1 target had improved, but the zero land degradation growed target is still not achieved. [Conclusion] The research results provided a reference for the impact of land use change on ecosystem services in the process of achieving SDG 15.3.1 in plateau urban agglomerations.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their indicators provide opportunities to best combine the available knowledge and data to monitor and estimate different metrics and track their progress. The overall picture can be complex as some indicators are often interconnected (e.g., rural and/or urban development with a water body's status). Two factors can play a crucial role in achieving the SDGs: the use of new technologies for database building and multidisciplinary studies and understanding. This study aims to explore these factors, highlight their importance and provide an example as guidance of their proper and combinative use. Ireland is used as an example of a data-scarce case with poor-slow progress, especially on the environmental SDGs. Two "non-reported" SDG indicators (lack of data) are selected and estimated in this work using freely available data (remote sensing, satellite imagery) and geospatial software for the first time in the country. The results show improvements in rural and urban development; however, this is accompanied by negative environmental consequences. A more holistic approach is needed and a broader conceptual model is presented to avoid any misleading interpretations of the study of SDGs. The transition to the modern technological and multidisciplinary evolution requires respective knowledge and understanding, strongly based on complex systems analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation and restoring degraded land is an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services that are vital to life on Earth. To halt and reverse the current trends in land degradation, there is an immediate need to enhance national capacities to undertake quantitative assessments and mapping of their degraded lands, as required by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular, the SDG indicator 15.3.1 (“proportion of land that is degraded over total land area”). Earth Observations (EO) can play an important role both for generating this indicator as well as complementing or enhancing national official data sources. Implementations like Trends.Earth to monitor land degradation in accordance with the SDG15.3.1 rely on default datasets of coarse spatial resolution provided by MODIS or AVHRR. Consequently, there is a need to develop methodologies to benefit from medium to high-resolution satellite EO data (e.g. Landsat or Sentinels). In response to this issue, this paper presents an initial overview of an innovative approach to monitor land degradation at the national scale in compliance with the SDG15.3.1 indicator using Landsat observations using a data cube but further work is required to improve the calculation of the three sub-indicators.