Local to regional land surface processes related to land cover/land use change represent an important first-order forcing of climate variability. Changes in land cover due to urbanization, agriculture, and engineering projects have important consequences for vegetation, soil moisture, sensible and latent heat fluxes, air temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, the distribution of frozen ground (in high latitude/altitude regions), etc. In areas where rapid and extensive alterations to the land surface have occurred, such as China, parts of North America and Europe, high-latitude areas, as well as many other regions, the analogous land surface processes can have widespread climatic and environmental consequences. These special sessions will therefore focus on the contribution of surface processes related to land cover/land use change on climate variability at a variety of spatial scales: local, regional, and potentially hemispheric and global.