Land system science and affiliated research linked to sustainability require improved understanding and theorization of land and its change as a social-ecological system (SES). The absence of a general land-use theory, anchored in the social subsystem but with explicit links to the environmental subsystem, hampers this effort. Drawing on land-use explanations, meta-analyses, and associated frameworks, we advance a broad framework structure of eight elements – aggregations of explanatory variables – with links to the biophysical subsystem, for systematic comparisons of extant explanations. Tests and models can be employed to identify which set of variables and their configurations provide robust explanations of across land uses, identifying the potential for theory development. The framework and its application are applicable to both top-down and bottom-up explanatory approaches employed in the social sciences. Links to the environmental subsystem invite future exploration of SES explanations that reach across the different dimensions of global change and sustainability science.

与可持续性相关的土地系统科学和附属研究要求提高对土地及其作为社会生态系统（SES）的变化的理解和理论化。缺乏一般的土地利用理论，这种理论扎根于社会子系统中，但与环境子系统有着明确的联系，因而阻碍了这一努力。利用土地使用的解释，荟萃分析和相关框架，我们提出了由八个要素组成的广泛框架结构（解释变量的集合），并与生物物理子系统建立了链接，以便对现有解释进行系统比较。可以使用测试和模型来确定哪组变量及其配置可对整个土地用途提供可靠的解释，从而确定理论发展的潜力。该框架及其应用适用于社会科学中采用的自上而下和自下而上的解释方法。链接到环境子系统的链接邀请我们将来探索SES的解释，这些解释涉及全球变化和可持续性科学的不同方面。