Research for Sustainable Land Management appears to be a designated field for a transdiciplinary approach. Because of the number of involved scientific disciplines, stakeholders and target groups, sustainable land management is characterized by a high level of complexity. An integrative understanding is required that goes beyond disciplinary knowledge and sectoral viewpoints, including diverse societal needs, values as well as local knowledge. From April 17th to April 19th 2013, the ‘Sustainable Land Management’ funding measure launched by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research sponsored a status conference in Berlin, Germany, to discuss findings from the first 3 years. This article reports on experiences with and discussion results about transdisciplinary research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.