At ISRIC, Lieven has been involved in various projects in the Sustainable Land Management (SLM) program. These include: Development & implementation of a Soil Fertility and Crop Nutrient Management Platform, Land Potential Knowledge System, Soil Information System for Africa.

Lieven has extensive experience with (spatial) analysis, integrated assessment and modelling of soil–landscape–land use systems. He is a co-developer of the LAPSUS modelling framework, a collection of spatially explicit landscape process simulation models (erosion by runoff, tillage and landsliding). LAPSUS has been explicitly linked to methodologies addressing (agro-) ecological processes, land use and climate change to holistically assess interactions and feedback mechanisms between soil and landscape dynamics, land use/cover and associated current and future livelihood outcomes.

In addition, he has experience with crop growth simulation models, household modelling, tradeoff analyses, food security and yield gap assessments, digital soil mapping, and integrated assessments of agricultural systems, with a strong emphasis on adapting and improving smallholder farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current R4D efforts focus on interactions and feedback mechanisms between bio-physical and socio-economic processes, from household to landscape and regional scale levels, in the context of food and nutrition security and sustainable intensification under climate change. Examples of previous and ongoing projects are: AgMIP, Global Yield Gap Atlas, CIRCASA.

Lieven speaks Dutch, English, French, Kiswahili, Spanish.