Search results for "environmental planning."
showing 10 items of 295 documents
The Importance of Engaging Local People in Landscape Management – Experiences from an EU Project
2018
“Bull by the Horns” -project initiated landscape management and promoted biodiversity associated with diminishing High Nature Value farmland habitats in Finland. A specific focus was on grazed semi-natural grasslands and wood-pastures which are collectively referred to as traditional rural biotopes (TRBs). Collaboration among project workers, non-farming landowners, and cattle owners reintroduced grazing to abandoned pastures, and management was financed through agri-environmental payments. Using adaptive co-management principles, the project enabled collective definition of integrated site-specific management objectives. A better understanding of contemporary challenges and opportunities t…
Limits and targets for a regional sustainability assessment: an interdisciplinary exploration of the threshold concept
2008
Part 5. Regional and local evaluation-18 ; International audience; Some encompassing terminology is required in order to accommodate different conceptual approaches in the three pillars of sustainability. So, this chapter provides a literature review exploring the threshold concept. In environmental research – especially in ecology – thresholds are often associated with limits which have certain system-inherent processes. In social and economic disciplines, if the notion of limit or critical limit is present, the concept of targets is often more appropriate which are linked to political objectives and social acceptability. The concept of threshold is accommodated within the general framewor…
Priorities for research in soil ecology
2017
The ecological interactions that occur in and with soil are of consequence in many ecosystems on the planet. These interactions provide numerous essential ecosystem services, and the sustainable management of soils has attracted increasing scientific and public attention. Although soil ecology emerged as an independent field of research many decades ago, and we have gained important insights into the functioning of soils, there still are fundamental aspects that need to be better understood to ensure that the ecosystem services that soils provide are not lost and that soils can be used in a sustainable way. In this perspectives paper, we highlight some of the major knowledge gaps that shoul…
Towards sustainable and multifunctional agriculture in farmland landscapes: Lessons from the integrative approach of a French LTSER platform
2018
International audience; Agriculture is currently facing unprecedented challenges: ensuring food, fiber and energy production in the face of global change, maintaining the economic performance of farmers and preserving natural resources such as biodiversity and associated key ecosystem services for sustainable agriculture. Addressing these challenges requires innovative landscape scale farming systems that account for changing economic and environmental targets. These novel agricultural systems need to be recognized, accepted and promoted by all stakeholders, including local residents, and supported by public policies. Agroecosystems should be considered as socio-ecological systems and alter…
Land-use and climate related drivers of change in the reindeer management system in Finland: geography of perceptions
2021
Drivers of change in the reindeer management system are rather well-known. But when developing the gover-nance to support the traditional livelihoods, it is crucial to understand also practitioner perceptions. Systematic research on these is lacking. We analyzed the land-use and climate related drivers within the reindeer man-agement area (RMA) in Finland, and, using a perception geography approach, studied the herder perceptions towards these. We conducted an on-site questionnaire survey with herders from 51 herding districts. Factors directly affecting the welfare of reindeer were perceived as crucial by herders, for example basal icing affecting the forage availability, and land-use rela…
Adaptation to climate change of the French wine industry: a systemic approach – Main outcomes of the project LACCAVE
2018
Présenté au 12. Congreso Internacional Terroir; Taking into account the major economical role and specificities of the French wine industry, adaptation to climate change is a very challenging issue. In 2011, 23 research teams launched a systemic and multidisciplinary program to analyze the impacts from the vine to the region, to define adaptation strategies combining technical, spatial and organizational options and to evaluate the perception by the actors and consumers of climate change issues. Thermal variability was studied at local scale to develop high resolution atmospheric models which better simulate future climate trends. Impacts on growth/developmental conditions and vine response…
Quantifying and resolving conservation conflicts in forest landscapes via multiobjective optimization
2017
Environmental planning for of the maintenance of different conservation objectives should take into account multiple contrasting criteria based on alternative uses of the landscape. We develop new concepts and approaches to describe and measure conflicts among conservation objectives and for resolving them via multiobjective optimization. To measure conflicts we introduce a compatibility index that quantifies how much targeting a certain conservation objective affects the capacity of the landscape for providing another objective. To resolve such conflicts we find compromise solutions defined in terms of minimax regret, i.e. minimizing the maximum percentage of deterioration among conservati…
Applying Biomimicry to Cities: The Forest as Model for Urban Planning and Design
2021
International audience; The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possible by this model in the fields of urban planning, urban water systems, urban energy and transport systems, and urban food and nutrient systems.
Reviewing the role of ecosystems services in the sustainability of the urban environment: A multi-country analysis
2020
The urban environment is characterised by many pressures caused by population growth, transport (and its related emissions), and the damage to green areas. Yet, there is a variety of ecosystem services available in urban areas, which may be deployed to ameliorate the current problems and foster their sustainability. This paper reviews the role of ecosystem services as tools for sustainability, based on an urban setting. It also describes a series of multi-country case studies, where an assessment of their functions using a set of benefits valuation approaches such as health benefits, economic benefits, social benefits and benefits to climate resilience, are provided, along with an appraisal…
Assessing Urban System Vulnerabilities to Flooding to Improve Resilience and Adaptation in Spatial Planning
2018
Fluvial, pluvial and coastal flooding are the most frequent and costly natural hazard. Cities are social hubs and life in cities is reliant on a number of services and functions such as housing, healthcare, education and other key daily facilities. Urban flooding can cause significant disruption to these services and wider impacts on the population. These impacts may be short or long with a variably spatial scale: urban systems are spatially distributed and the nature of this can have significant effects on flood impacts. From an urban-planning perspective, measuring this disruption and its consequences is fundamental in order to develop more resilient cities. Whereas the assessment of phys…