scholarly journals Landscape Evaluation as a Complementary Tool in Environmental Assessment. Study Case in Urban Areas: Salamanca (Spain)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6395
Author(s):  
Marco Criado ◽  
Antonio Martínez-Graña ◽  
Fernando Santos-Francés ◽  
Leticia Merchán

In recent years, the landscape has become another environmental resource, so it is important to incorporate it into planning actions. However, its broad sense of study has made it difficult to develop methodologies that precisely diagnose the state of the landscape and its management requirements, especially in dynamic spaces like urban areas. In order to develop a method capable of providing information that can be incorporated into environmental assessment and territorial planning tasks so that the needs of the landscape are taken into account in the decision-making stages, an objective methodology is presented based on the study of different parameters (biotic, abiotic and socioeconomic) analyzed in the field and subsequently geoprocessed through Geographic Information Systems according to their influence on the landscape. Through the proposed methodology it is possible to determine the quality, fragility and need of protection of the landscape, as well as to identify the diverse landscape units that form the landscape of a territory. Based on these results, a landscape diagnosis can be drawn up to quantify its overall and partial state, carry out monitoring analyses and make comparisons between different landscape units, so that management measures can be adopted according to the obtained scenarios.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4749
Author(s):  
Milo Costanza-van den Belt ◽  
Tayanah O’Donnell ◽  
Robert Webb ◽  
Eleanor Robson ◽  
Robert Costanza ◽  
...  

Civil society engagement is important for enabling urban systems transformations that meet community needs. The development of Future Earth Australia’s Sustainable Cities and Regions: A 10-Year Strategy for Urban Systems was underpinned by cross-sectoral workshops in 7 Australian urban areas and interviews with key stakeholders to create a shared vision of both current and desired future urban structure and policy. We then created an online survey to gauge broader community feedback on the vision which emerged from these workshops and interviews, to compare their outcomes with the views of community members who could be directly impacted by urban decision-making. The survey consisted of 35 questions, which were shaped by the issues emerging from the workshops and interviews. The sample was self-selected, and the 641 respondents represented a cross-section of individuals interested in sustainable cities. Our survey results supported and expanded on the major conclusions of FEA’s National workshop and interview processes, including the need to develop transparent and responsive decision-making processes, limit waste and pollution and develop effective housing and transport alternatives with mixed-use neighborhoods and adequate green space.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitja Janža ◽  
Joerg Prestor ◽  
Simona Pestotnik ◽  
Brigita Jamnik

The assurance of drinking water supply is one of the biggest emerging global challenges, especially in urban areas. In this respect, groundwater and its management in the urban environment are gaining importance. This paper presents the modeling of nitrogen load from the leaky sewer system and from agriculture and the impact of this pressure on the groundwater quality (nitrate concentration) in the urban aquifer located beneath the City of Ljubljana. The estimated total nitrogen load in the model area of 58 km2 is 334 ton/year, 38% arising from the leaky sewer system and 62% from agriculture. This load was used as input into the groundwater solute transport model to simulate the distribution of nitrate concentration in the aquifer. The modeled nitrate concentrations at the observation locations were found to be on average slightly lower (2.7 mg/L) than observed, and in general reflected the observed contamination pattern. The ability of the presented model to relate and quantify the impact of pressures from different contamination sources on groundwater quality can be beneficially used for the planning and optimization of groundwater management measures for the improvement of groundwater quality.


2012 ◽  
Vol 178-181 ◽  
pp. 820-824
Author(s):  
Li Li Tian ◽  
Ya Fei Zhao

Some strategic environmental assessment (SEA) pilot cases in China strive to integrate environmental issues into the planning from the beginning. One of them is the SEA for development strategy of Tianjin Binhai New Area. The SEA adopted an interactive assessment mode with the decision-making process and predicted the environmental impacts of the development strategy on land resource, water resource, energy, surface water, atmospheric environment, and ecosystem of land area and offshore area. The future development strategy of circular economy and low-carbon economy in Tianjin Binhai New Area was also analyzed. Finally, experience from the SEA case was discussed. The case study shows that support from non-environmental agencies, early integration of SEA process and planning process, interactive assessment mode, and sensible environmental protection strategy facilitate the integration of environment into decision-making.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela De Souza Gomes ◽  
Marcos Henrique Fonseca Ribeiro ◽  
Giovanni Ventorim Comarela ◽  
Gabriel Philippe Pereira

High failure rates are a worrying and relevant problem in Brazilian universities. From a data set of student transcripts, we performed a study case for both general and Computer Science contexts, in which Data Mining Techniques were used to find patterns concerning failures. The knowledge acquired can be used for better educational administration and also build intelligent systems to support students’ decision making.


Online grocery retail services are a new trend in Indian urban cities. The two large players namely Grofersand Big Basket attracting customers. The study is an attempt to understand the changing scenario in grocery retail sector. The prime objective of the study is to explore the factors that are attracting customers to choose e retail for Groceries. The data was collected through questionnaire from 100 respondents. Factor analysis (Principle Component Analysis method) was used to explore the influencing factors. These results have shown that mainly customer service, convenience, loyalty rewards, product vailability and payment options are attracting the customers to choose Grophers and Big Basket. These companies have a huge untapped markets and will easily convert the habits of customers in Urban areas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossi Allan Silva ◽  
José Aldo Alves Pereira ◽  
Schirley Fátima Nogueira da Silva Cavalcante Alves

Landscapes are formed by physical elements of material order and abstract elements of immaterial order, so their management and planning should consider these two aspects. Aiming to understand the landscapes of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais State, the appropriation by the actors who work in the landscape was identified and classified, and also its dynamics from 1973 to 2015. The research analyzed the current landscape and its historical evolution, distinguishing material and immaterial dimensions, from field trips, soil types, relief, slope, drainage, conservation units, administrative zoning, urban areas, natural resources, transport and building infrastructure, satellite images, and semi-structured interviews. As a result, a map with the landscape units and their subunits, which have distinct characteristics, with their proper settings was obtained. The landscape has continuous boundaries with various operating scales, posing a major challenge for its proper management. The number of generated ecosystem services are difficult to measure, but its benefits are used by everyone. The dynamics of the landscape has been shaped by a slow evolution, set by mining activities, including revegetation areas after clear cuts and currently the inclusion of tourism in certain regions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 2-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Geletič ◽  
Michal Lehnert

Abstract Stewart and Oke (2012) recently proposed the concept of Local Climate Zones (LCZ) to describe the siting of urban meteorological stations and to improve the presentation of results amongst researchers. There is now a concerted effort, however, within the field of urban climate studies to map the LCZs across entire cities, providing a means to compare the internal structure of urban areas in a standardised way and to enable the comparison of cities. We designed a new GIS-based LCZ mapping method for Central European cities and compiled LCZ maps for three selected medium-sized Central European cities: Brno, Hradec Králové, and Olomouc (Czech Republic). The method is based on measurable physical properties and a clearly defined decision-making algorithm. Our analysis shows that the decision-making algorithm for defining the percentage coverage for individual LCZs showed good agreement (in 79–89% of cases) with areas defined on the basis of expert knowledge. When the distribution of LCZs on the basis of our method and the method of Bechtel and Daneke (2012) was compared, the results were broadly similar; however, considerable differences occurred for LCZs 3, 5, 10, D, and E. It seems that Central European cities show a typical spatial pattern of LCZ distribution but that rural settlements in the region also regularly form areas of built-type LCZ classes. The delineation and description of the spatial distribution of LCZs is an important step towards the study of urban climates in a regional setting.


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