Visual Aesthetic Quality of Northern Ontario's Forested Shorelines

Only a few empirical studies on forest aesthetics have adopted a water-based perspective for observers and have investigated the perceived visual quality of forested shorelines. In forested environments with many lakes, such as the boreal forest in the Canadian Shield, individuals have greater exposure to forests from water-based rather than in-stand vantage points. This study employed the psychophysical research direction to explore the relationships between scenic beauty and biophysical characteristics of the forested shorelines in the boreal forests. Two model forms were tested. One model related the variation of shoreline forest aesthetic evaluations of near-vista views (140 m offshore) to a set of forest mensuration data. Tree size, tree mortality, conifer shrubs, tree density, amount of hardwood, and slope explained 60.2% of the variance in scenic beauty between the study sites. A second model was calibrated to test the relationship between an already existing ecosystem vegetation classification system and the aesthetic evaluations of the same forested shorelines. When the ecosystem classification was simplified to eight groups, the model explained 48.5% of variance. These models suggest that the psychophysical approach to studying aesthetics can be applied successfully to near-vista evaluations of scenic beauty. The finding that a forest ecosystem classification system is highly related to scenic beauty suggests that, at least in the boreal forest, managers can reasonably estimate the scenic beauty of forested shoreline environments from an ecosystem classification, with little need for intensive data on these sites.     

Traditional Land-Use Systems and Patterns of Forest Fragmentation in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico

The influence of slash-and-burn agriculture and tree extraction on the spatial and temporal pattern of forest fragmentation in two municipalities in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico was analyzed. The data series were derived from two subsets of satellite images taken in 1974 and 1996. The analysis was based on area, edge, shape, core area, and neighbor indices. During the 22 years, the dense forest decreased by 8.9%/yr in Huistán and by 8.6%/yr in Chanal, while open/disturbed forest, secondary vegetation, and developed area increased in both municipalities. The total number of fragments increased by 1.4%/yr and 2.3%/yr in Huistán and Chanal, respectively. Dense forest showed the highest increase in the number of fragments (6%/yr in Huistán and 12%/yr in Chanal), while edge length, core area, and number of dense forest core areas decreased. The larger fragments of dense forest present in 1974 were divided into smaller fragments in 1996; at the same time, they experienced a process of degradation toward open/disturbed forest and secondary vegetation. Two different fragmentation patterns could be distinguished based on agricultural or forestry activities. Forest fragmentation did not occur as a continuous process; the pattern and degree of fragmentation were functions of land tenure, environmental conditions, and productive activities. The prevalence of rather poor soil conditions, small-holdings, growing human population densities, increasing poverty, and the absence of alternative economic options will maintain a high rate of deforestation and forest fragmentation in the studied region.     

Effective Planning and Implementation of Ecological Rehabilitation Projects: A Case Study of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada)

The literature guides environmental planning and, specifically, how to use ecological rehabilitation projects to achieve long-term planning goals and landscape-scale environmental sustainability. There is, however, a perceived gap between principles in the literature and the use of them by practitioners involved in smaller-scale ecological rehabilitation projects. Using interviews with practitioners involved in 11 projects within the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, we tested whether practitioners used five principles for effective planning and implementation of ecological rehabilitation that we derived from the literature. These five principles were: establishing political and ecological context, using ecologically appropriate objectives and practices, using comparative multidisciplinary and cross-scale approaches, using adaptive planning and implementation, and establishing good communication within and external to projects. Few projects followed all five principles, and practitioners indicated that they used three more project-specific principles: obtaining political/social support, promoting projects and changing attitudes about projects, and securing sufficient and persistent funding to maintain a project's life. While the literature emphasizes that ecological rehabilitation is only effective if projects are coordinated on a watershed basis, most practitioners focused solely on the goals of their specific project. The gap between literature and practice may arise because most practitioners are new to the field of ecological rehabilitation and still are focused on the methods involved. Time pressures force practitioners to obviate the literature and get projects started quickly, lest support evaporate. Complicating these difficulties is decreased support from federal and provincial governments for large-scale environmental planning. It is unclear whether ecological rehabilitation projects in Waterloo Region (at least) will ever become effective at promoting landscape-scale ecological goals or remain smaller-scale stop-gaps.     

基于优势隐含周期分析的气象灾害预报

建立了优势因子和优势隐含周期的概念,并提出了多因子逐步回归周期分析的新方法。该方法既能增长预报期,又能充分利用物理因子的重要信息,同时在计算过程中还能挑选出起显著作用的优势因子和优势隐含周期,对预报气象要素的变化趋势效果较好,有一定的实用价值,是气象灾害预报的一条比较有效的途径。     

Biopotentiality as an index of environmental compensation for composting plants

The Biopotentiality Index is a landscape ecology indicator, which can be used to estimate the latent energy of a given land and to assess the environmental impacts due to the loss of naturalness on a landscape scale. This indicator has been applied to estimate the effectiveness of the measures put in place to provide an environmental compensation for the revamping of a composting plant. These compensation measures are represented by a green belt with a minimum width of 25 m all around the plant, representing both a windbreak and a buffer zone, and by two wide wooded zones acting as core natural areas.This case-study shows that the compensation index could be used as a key tool in order to negotiate the acceptance of waste treatment plant with the population.     

Incorporating Geological Effects in Modeling of Revegetation Strategies for Salt-Affected Landscapes

The work highlights the difficulties of using standard sampling and statistical techniques to investigate regional phenomena and presents an integrated approach combining small-scale sampling with broad-scale observations to provide input into a modeling exercise. It is suggested that such approaches are vital if landscape- and regional-scale processes are to be understood and managed. The way in which the problem is perceived (holistically or piecemeal) affects the way treatments are designed and their effectiveness: past approaches have failed to integrate the various scales and processes involved. Effective solutions require an integrated holistic response.     

The value of urban ecosystem services in New York City: A spatially explicit multicriteria analysis of landscape scale valuation scenarios

Mapping, modeling, and valuing urban ecosystem services are important for integrating the ecosystem services concept in urban planning and decision-making. However, decision-support tools able to consider multiple ecosystem services in the urban setting using complex and heterogeneous data are still in early development. Here, we use New York City (NYC) as a case study to evaluate and analyze how the value of multiple ecosystem services of urban green infrastructure shifts with shifting governance priorities. We first examined the spatial distribution of five ecosystem services – storm water absorption, carbon storage, air pollution removal, local climate regulation, and recreation – to create the first multiple ecosystem services evaluation of all green infrastructure in NYC. Then, combining an urban ecosystem services landscape approach with spatial multicriteria analysis weighting scenarios, we examine the distribution of these ecosystem services in the city. We contrast the current NYC policy preference – which is focused on heavy investment in stormwater absorption – with a valuation approach that also accounts for other ecosystem services. We find substantial differences in the spatial distribution of priority areas for green infrastructure for the valuation scenarios. Among the scenarios we examined for NYC, we find that a scenario in which only stormwater absorption is prioritized leads to the most unevenly distributed ES values. By contrast, we find least variation in ES values where stormwater absorption, local climate regulation, carbon storage, air pollution removal, and recreational potential are all weighted equally.We suggest that green infrastructure planning strategies should include all landscape components that contribute to the production of ecosystem services and consider how planning priority alternatives generate different ecosystem services values.     

Integrating economic landscape valuation into Mediterranean territorial planning

Recent and rapid landscape changes have occurred over large areas in Mediterranean Basin. Wildfires and human activities are the most important disturbances at landscape-level due to their ecological and socio-economic impacts. The increasing demand which society places on the forest landscapes has led us to develop a tool to identify the economic landscape value around natural protected areas. Our research focused on the integration of social, ecological and economic components of landscape management based on stated social preferences and contingent valuation method (CVM). Landscape value research has been motivated by the need to assist land use planning and environmental management.Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have provided new opportunities to spatially distributed modeling of landscape quality. Correlations were found between the representativeness of the landscape and its sense of belonging, and the contingent rating. Landscape with intensive agricultural practices and mining areas were the least preferred landscapes. There was a notable variation in the economic landscape value attributed to the study area based on the considered CVM scenario, ranging from 1,253,075.1 Euros to 3,650,827.8 Euros. We added the geospatial allocation of willingness to pay according to five landscape quality categories. Our approach could be used to identify priority areas for conservation based on maximizing landscape value, and would be useful in detecting interesting or conflict areas associated with new management and planning alternatives. In this sense, this approach offers managers to seek territorial management strategies to increase economic efficiency in the allocation of resources.     

Applying ecosystem concepts to the planning of industrial areas: a case study of Singapore’s Jurong Island

The application of ecological concepts to the industrial setting has been touched upon by literature across several disciplines. Two emerging ecological planning approaches, landscape ecology and industrial ecology, are applied here to look at alternative ways of planning industrial parks. As an emerging field, landscape ecology provides different viewpoints from the traditional approach of natural conservation, which mainly focuses on the protection of nature. The approach of landscape ecology regards the environment as a land mosaic, a mixture of natural and urban environment, which concerns a manageable human-scale environment across one or two human generations. Industrial ecology, on the other hand, goes beyond the traditional “end of pipe” idea of pollution control and learns from the ecosystem concept. The current paper is an attempt to reconcile these two fields as an integrated approach to the planning of industrial areas. Using a case study of Singapore’s Jurong Island industrial park, two fundamental issues behind the idea of landscape ecology and industrial ecology are raised. If raw materials, energy and by-products are more easily replaced or reused by technology and management, then research on industrial ecology and related knowledge will be crucial for developing natural resource substitution by innovative technology and new ways of environmental management. Where it is difficult to substitute natural resources, the skills of planning and managing natural resources will take priority over other strategies. In this situation, the knowledge of landscape ecology needs to be applied to the prediction, design and evaluation of ecologically optimum resource uses, patterns and processes in the mixture of natural, urban and industrial environment. A new concept, “nurtured landscape”, is proposed for mediating between the natural ecosystem and the urban/industrial environment. The nurtured landscape provides a basis for the development of new ecological technology using landscape to ameliorate the polluting effects of the urban/industrial neighbourhood. The planning of Singapore’s Jurong Island industrial park provides a test of applying the principles of landscape ecology and industrial ecology to the possible transformation of an industrial area.