Agriculture is the major form of protection of local identities and sustainability and one of the most fragile Italian economic sectors, exposed to fluctuations of the financial/economic crisis. As a consequence, boosting agricultural policies should integrate conflicting objectives connected to preservation and innovation, effectiveness/efficiency, and landscape features and job opportunities....

Ecological research targeting sustainable urban landscapes needs to include findings and methods from many lines of ecological research, such as the link between biodiversity and ecosystem function, the role of humans in ecosystems, landscape connectivity, and resilience. This paper reviews and highlights the importance of these issues for sustainable use of ecosystem services, which is argued ...

Affiliations: 10 1 Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) University of Twente, P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands 2 UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Permoserstr.15 D 04318 Leipzig, Germany 3 Natural Environment Research Council, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Bush Estate, Penicuik, EH26 0QB, 15 U...

realistically and justifiably allocated to protected areas? And perhaps even more importantly, on the remaining actively managed landscape, what forest management practices should be employed and how can these be encouraged? Answers to these questions must be adaptive to evolving models of sustainable ecosystem management as well as geopolitical context and local community involvement. In this ...

Vernacular architecture has always had appropriate answer in conformity with the environment and climate. This paper has considered values of Iran vernacular urbanization and architecture in humid and moderate climate looking through sustainability and sustainable development concepts. Gorgan city has been studied using laboratory studies and available sources and relying on the content analysi...

Rural Development is a priority in Europe and it is supported by specific, financial programmes. At the same time, sustainability is the key word for the European Union to construct programmes and policies for all human activities. However, measuring sustainability of rural areas is not easy, due to their particular features. The improvement of knowledge on sustainability in rural areas is impo...