Everything you need to run a participatory land use planning project for Land Degradation Neutrality — from preparing your national data to reading the final neutrality balance. Written for planners, not developers.
LUP4LDN User Guide, version 2.0
The complete walkthrough, plus the dataset metadata, the standards conformance statement and the development roadmap.
The workflow, in six moves
Each is a full section of the guide. Sections 1–3 are background and preparation — read them once. Sections 4–10 follow the order you will actually work in.
Prepare your data
Region of interest, land use map, degradation map, suitability maps, focus areas. Or start with the tool’s global defaults.
Set the context
Create a project, invite your team, pin the region of interest and choose your baseline maps.
Read the current state
Land use against suitability, then the anticipated new degradation. Pick your hotspots.
Evaluate land management
Define focus areas, agree the assessment indicators, and score the practices in place.
Plan the transitions
Set the transition impact matrix, build consecutive scenarios, and choose SLM alternatives from WOCAT as a team.
Consolidate
Open the neutrality matrix and map, read the balance, and calibrate until the plan works.
Also in the guide
Beyond the walkthrough, the guide is the reference record for how LUP4LDN works and what it is built on.
Annex A Data sources and metadata
Producer, resolution, coordinate system, temporal coverage and terms of use for every dataset that ships with the tool — and the derivation lineage of every map and table it produces.
Annex B Standards conformance
How LUP4LDN relates to the UNCCD Good Practice Guidance v2.0 for SDG 15.3.1, the GEO-LDN minimum data quality standards, and the LDN scientific conceptual framework.
§1.3 The assumptions it makes
Six named assumptions and what each means for your results — including why anticipated degradation is a transparent overlay and not a simulation.
§12 Common pitfalls
Eleven documented failure modes from the Tunisia and Burkina Faso pilots, each as symptom, cause and fix. Read it before your first workshop, not after.
§15 Development roadmap
What is planned and when, so nobody has to guess whether the tool is still being developed.
Annex D Translating the guide
The guide is openly licensed so that it can be translated. French is the priority, given the user base in Tunisia, Burkina Faso and Senegal.
What to bring to your first session
You can run a complete project on the built-in global datasets. National data gives far more useful results. Section 3 of the guide covers preparation in full.
| Input | Format | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Land degradation map, consistent with SDG 15.3.1 | .tif GeoTIFF raster | Optional — a global default is provided |
| Land use map | .tif GeoTIFF raster | Optional — a global default is provided |
| Land suitability map | .tif GeoTIFF raster | Required if you upload your own land use map |
| Region of interest | .geojson polygon | Optional — or pick an administrative area in the tool |
| Focus areas | .geojson polygon | Required — one file per focus area |
| Land use transition areas | .geojson polygon | Optional — needed to get scenarios as a map, not just a table |
Free to use, free to adapt
This guide is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. You may copy it, adapt it for your national context, translate it and republish it — including commercially — as long as you credit the original and say what you changed.
The software itself is free and open source under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
Zucca, C., Le, Q.B., Karampiperis, P., Lemann, T., Thomas, R., Thiombiano, B.A., Hermassi, T., Bonaiuti, E. & Zervas, P. (2024). Toward an operational tool to integrate land degradation neutrality into land use planning: LUP4LDN. Land Degradation & Development, 35(7), 2489–2507. doi.org/10.1002/ldr.5075
Where to go next
The tool, the code, and the sources it draws on.
Need help?
LUP4LDN is maintained and supported by SCiO, winner of the GEO-LDN International Technology Innovation Competition (2021).
A question about using the tool
lup4ldn@scio.systems — we also offer consultations and tailored training.
Ask the community
GitHub Discussions — planning teams share practice, with input from the development team.
Report a bug
GitHub Issues — see CONTRIBUTING.md for what to include.
Contribute
Pull requests are welcome. Start with an issue labelled good first issue.
Take the guide with you
Most LUP4LDN work happens in a workshop room, sometimes without reliable internet. Download it before you go.