Much of the recent literature on interactions between population and land use has focused on case studies at subnational geographic scales, from individual villages and districts (Walsh et al., Chapter 6) to larger regions, such as the Brazilian Amazon (Moran, Brondizio and VanWey, Chapter 5) and the U.S. Great Plains (Gutmann et al., Chapter 4). There is also an ongoing stream of research addressing questions at the global level, particularly as applied to assessments of biodiversity loss, climate change, and outlooks for agriculture and water. This chapter asks whether and how such global analyses can be informed and improved by recent case study research. Following this introduction, we review prominent global models of land use change, with a particular focus on the role of population. We conclude that the best way to bridge the gap between such models and case study research is through spatially explicit analysis at the level of large regions. We then describe one such research project, the CHINAGRO project at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which is aimed at analyzing the potential impacts of trade liberalization and increasing incomes on the agricultural sector and on the livelihoods of the rural population that depends on agriculture in China