In many developing countries, limiting factors for development of sustainable production systems include variability in agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions, poor access to geo-referenced data and information, and poor relationship between the civil society, researchers and decision makers. Working with Interactive Development Scenarios (IDS) models may provide a way to plan (agricultu...

urban environments rely on the surrounding natural ecosystems remnants as providers of ecosystemfunctions, therefore these areas not only support a unique biodiversity but also have a social value for maintainingpublic health andwellbeing. for this reason, urbanization is considered to be one the biggest threats to ecosystems,leading to native biodiversity simplification and, thus, to a detrime...

To make a difference in policy making about socio-ecological systems, ecologists must grasp when decision makers are amenable to acting on ecological expertise and when they are not. To enable them to do so we present a matrix for classifying a socio-ecological system by the extent of what we don’t know about its natural components and the social interactions that affects them. We use four exam...

landscape ecology as a modern interdisciplinary science offers new concepts, theories, and methods for land evaluation and management. a main part of landscape ecology is describing patterns in the landscape and interpreting the ecological effects of these patterns on flora, fauna, flow of energy and materials. remote sensing and gis techniques have a high ability for landscape researchers to s...

Integrated catchment policies are widely used to manage natural resources in Australian catchments. Decision support tools available to aid integrated catchment management are often limited in their integration of environmental processes with socio-economic systems. Fully integrated models are required to support assessments of the environmental and economic trade-offs of catchment management c...