To deal with global warming and biodiversity loss, historical land use in South Asia received wide attention because of its huge population and rich biodiversity. We reviewed representative global and regional historical land use reconstructions for South Asia from their data sources, methods of area estimation and spatial mapping, and outcomes. Then we made some prospects on developing historical land use for South Asia. The land use area of South Asia in global reconstructions was mainly estimated using population. For the spatial pattern, most of them assumed that the historical distribution of land use in South Asia mimics satellite-based land use patterns or that the land use area was pixelized based on land suitability for cultivation and grazing. Large discrepancies exist among these global reconstructions in the land use area and spatial patterns with increasing magnitude with time in the past. The regional reconstructions of historical land use for South Asia used more regional historical records, but most covered only about one hundred years. The closer to the past, the lower the spatial-temporal resolution of these regional reconstructions. Great discrepancies also exist between these regional reconstructions because of the differences in cropland definition. Expansion of archaeological data sources, meta-analysis, and crowdsourcing will bring insights into area estimation of historical land use. Remote sensing and machine learning will facilitate spatial pattern mapping. Reconstruction region-by-region, and then integration, is also a solution for current challenges in reconstructing historical land use for South Asia.

为应对全球变暖和生物多样性丧失，南亚人口众多、生物多样性丰富，历史土地利用受到广泛关注。我们从数据来源、面积估计和空间制图方法以及结果中回顾了南亚具有代表性的全球和区域历史土地利用重建。然后我们对南亚历史土地利用的开发做了一些展望。全球重建中南亚土地利用面积主要采用人口估算。对于空间格局，他们中的大多数人假设南亚土地利用的历史分布模仿基于卫星的土地利用模式，或者土地利用面积根据土地的耕种和放牧适宜性进行像素化。这些全球重建在过去的土地利用面积和空间格局中存在巨大差异，并且随着时间的推移幅度越来越大。南亚历史土地利用的区域重建使用了更多的区域历史记录，但大多数只涵盖了大约一百年。越接近过去，这些区域重建的时空分辨率越低。由于耕地定义的差异，这些区域重建之间也存在很大差异。考古数据源、荟萃分析和众包的扩展将为历史土地利用的面积估算带来见解。遥感和机器学习将促进空间格局映射。逐区重建，再整合，