The assessment of land use and land cover is an important activity for cont- porary land management. Human land-use practices are the most significant factors influencing environmental management at local, regional, national, and global scales. In the past, environmental policies have often reflected a reactive response to environmental perturbations with management efforts focused on short-term, local-scale problems such as pollutant abatement. Currently, environmental management philosophy is evolving toward examination of critical environmental problems over larger spatial scales and assessment of the cumulative risk resulting from multiple problem sources. Today's environmental managers, urban planners, and decision-makers are increasingly expected to examine environmental and economic problems in a larger geographic context that crosses national boundaries and scientific disciplines. Secondly, cont- porary policy-makers have also been challenged on how they view security. The conventional definition of national security has been expanded to include environmental threats resulting from resource scarcity and overpopulation and it is recognized that environmental factors may have an impact in creating conflict and world instability. Thus the working definition of security has been broadened beyond relying on militaristic aspects alone and has evolved to include the environment. In 1969, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) partly in response to examine the link between environmental issues and security. CCMS was created for the purpose of addressing problems affecting the environment of the member nations and the quality of life of their citizens.

Compiles the most up-to-date landscape approaches and tools useful for the assessment of environmental security, a worldwide issue of social, economic, environmental and institutional importance Contributes to a new perspective of the environmental security combining subjective and objective assessment of environmental risk in the context of social-ecological landscapes Identifies the actual main driving forces (demography, land-use, industry) that can threat environmental security at local, national and international scale Introduces the new concept of "securability"

Autorentext
Prof. Dr. Felix Müller ist Vizedirektor am Bernischen Historischen Museum und Leiter der Abteilung für Ur- und Frühgeschichte.

Klappentext

This book examines environmental security from the perspective of landscape sciences, identifying the forces that threaten environmental security at all levels. It stems from the last five years of the Pilot Study Project on Use of Landscape Sciences for Environmental Assessment sponsored by the NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society. Readers explore concepts of environmental security from subjective and objective perspectives.

Inhalt
Environmental Security and Landscape Ecology.- Contributions of Landscape Sciences to the Development of Environmental Security.- Landscape Ecology and Environmental Security: basic concepts and regional applications for the Medit.- Landscape management for environmental security: some perspectives of adaptive management approaches.- The policy framework GMES as a guideline for the integration of environmental security research and landscape sciences.- Landscape Science Methodologies to Assess Environmental Security.- Investigating landscape patterns in protected areas using aster images.- Quantifying and Qualifying Urban Green by Integrating Remote Sensing, GIS, and Social Science Method.- Allometric scaling as an indicator of ecosystem state: a new approach.- Landscape Indicators and Landscape Change Detection.- Deriving the spatial traits of organized land structures.- Landscape monitoring as a tool in improving environmental security.- Landscapes of the natural park Vepssky Forest.- Multi-temporal coastal zone landscape change detection using remote sensing imagery and in situ data.- Landscape character as a framework for the assessment of environmental change.- Integrated Studies of Catchments and Basins.- An ecohydrological approach for the protection and enhancement of ecosystem services.- Environmental quality and landscape-hazard assessment in the Yantra River Basin, Bulgaria.- The influence of catchment land cover on phosphorus balance for large freshwater systems.- The use of scenario analysis to assess future landscape change on watershed condition in the pacific northwest (USA).- Cross-European landscape analyses: illustrative examples using existing spatial data.- Assessments of Human-Environmental Systems in Landscapes.-Demographic impacts on landscape change a conceptual view of global demographic trends.- Land use impacts of demographic change lessons from Eastern German urban regions.- The consequences of demographic change in Rhineland-Palatinate: scenarios of landscape consumption for settlement and transportation areas.- Landscape, demographic developments, biodiversity, and sustainable land use strategy: a case study on karaburun peninsula izmir, turkey.- Indication of the State of the Environment with GIS and People: a Case Study and planning tool for mulfingen, a municipality in South Germany.- Environmental security as related to scale mismatches of disturbance patterns in a panarchy of social-ecological landscapes.- Fostering ecosystem services' security by both objective and subjective analyses: the case of a natural protected area in Southern Italy.- Environmental assessing of reindeer herding in changing landscapes on different scales.- Environmental Applications of Landscape Ecological Methods Impact Assessments.- The contribution of quality assessment of eroded agricultural soil on hilly-undulating landscapes to sustainable community development.- Nuclear safety and its impact on the level of environmental security in Ukraine.- Environmental impact assessment as a tool for environmental restoration: the case study of Cop?a-Mic? area, romania.- Landscape approaches to assess environmental security: summary, conclusions, and recommendations.