Urban sprawl (US), propelled by rapid population growth leads to the shrinkage of productive agricultural lands and pristine forests in the suburban areas and, in turn, adversely affects the provision of ecosystem services. The quantification of US is thus crucial for effective urban planning and environmental management. Like many megacities in fast growing developing countries, Chennai, the c...

In landscape and urban planning, public participation and interactivity become more and more an issue. Real-time virtual 3D landscapes represent communication tools that allow experts as well as non-experts to use, explore, analyze, and understand landscape information. In our contribution, we describe the architecture and functionality of an interactive, participatory system, Lenné3D, which fa...

Urban ecological security is the basic principle of national ecological security. However, analyses of the spatial and temporal dynamics of ecological security remain limited, especially those that consider different scenarios of urban development. In this study, an integrated method is proposed that combines the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects (CLUE-S) model with the Pressure–State–Resp...

urban landscape structural analysis; focused on the remnant patch mosaic network as the component with closest interdependency with air and water related processes was undertaken to find and propose environmental planning suggestions.assessments demonstrate that remnant patch mosaic network structure of tehran is still restorable. with appropriate corrective measures based on the natural lay ou...

not long ago, city gates and entryways had high spatial value and were among the landmarks for marking city boundaries. today with cities having been expanded and developed, such aspect of the entrance concept is lost and entryways are turned to passages for transportation. in fact, the rich spatial value of such entrances has decreased as they are solely spaces for passing through out or into ...

1. The conservation of insects is not a priority for most urban dwellers, yet can be accomplished in urban settings by the careful design of urban nature. Our goal is to foster cross-talk between practitioners of insect conservation biology who develop the knowledge base and professional design practitioners who are poised to apply this knowledge in designs and management plans for urban green ...

The modelling of land use change is a way to analyse future scenarios by modelling different future pathways. This study demonstrates the potential to explore and test the understanding of land use change relations by applying spatial data of different scales, coupled with socio-economic data. In the EU-FP7 research project PASHMINA (Paradigm Shift modelling and innovative approaches), three st...

Mankind's quest for well-being results in continuous pressure to transform landscapes, with said transformation driven by land use changes, urbanization, production activity, and protective measures in addition to climate variability and other environmental drivers. The relationship between anthropogenic landscape changes and the provision of ecosystem services (ES) is a topic of increasing int...