Michael Batty Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London Landscapes, like cities, cut across disciplines and professions. This makes it especially difficult to provide an overall sense of how landscapes should be studied and researched. Ecology, aesthetics, economy and sociology combine with physiognomy and deep physical structure to confuse our - derstanding and the way we should react to the problems and potentials of landscapes. Nowhere are these dilemmas and paradoxes so clearly highlighted as in Australia - where landscapes dominate and their relationship to cities is so fragile, yet so important to the sustainability of an entire nation, if not planet. This book presents a unique collection and synthesis of many of these perspectives - perhaps it could only be produced in a land urb- ised in the tiniest of pockets, and yet so daunting with respect to the way non-populated landscapes dwarf its cities. Many travel to Australia to its cities and never see the landscapes - but it is these that give the country its power and imagery. It is the landscapes that so impress on us the need to consider how our intervention, through activities ranging from resource exploitation and settled agriculture to climate change, poses one of the greatest crises facing the modern world. In this sense, Australia and its landscape provide a mirror through which we can glimpse the extent to which our intervention in the world threatens its very existence.

Contenu
Understanding Landscapes through Knowledge Management Frameworks, Spatial Models, Decision Support Tools and Visualisation.- Natural Resource Knowledge Management Frameworks and Tools.- Reading between the Lines: Knowledge for Natural Resource Management.- Improving the Use of Science in Evidencebased Policy: Some Victorian Experiences in Natural Resource Management.- The Catchment Analysis Tool: Demonstrating the Benefits of Interconnected Biophysical Models.- The Application of a Simple Spatial Multi-Criteria Analysis Shell to Natural Resource Management Decision Making.- Platform for Environmental Modelling Support: a Grid Cell Data Infrastructure for Modellers.- Integrating the Ecology of Landscapes into Landscape Analysis and Visualisation.- Looking at Landscapes for Biodiversity: Whose View Will Do?.- Native Vegetation Condition: Site to Regional Assessments.- Towards Adaptive Management of Native Vegetation in Regional Landscapes.- Revegetation and the Significance of Timelags in Provision of Habitat Resources for Birds.- The Application of Genetic Markers to Landscape Management.- Scenario Analysis with Performance Indicators: a Case Study for Forest Linkage Restoration.- Socioeconomic Dimensions to Landscapes.- Strategic Spatial Governance: Deriving SocialEcological Frameworks for Managing Landscapes and Regions.- Placing People at the Centre of Landscape Assessment.- The Social Landscapes of Rural Victoria.- A Decision Aiding System for Predicting People's Scenario Preferences.- Land Use Change and Scenario Modelling.- Mapping and Modelling Land Use Change: an Application of the SLEUTH Model.- Uncertainty in Landscape Models: Sources, Impacts and Decision Making.- Assessing Water Quality Impacts of Community Defined Land Use Change Scenarios for theDouglas Shire, Far North Queensland.- Analysing Landscape Futures for Dryland Agricultural Areas: a Case Study in the Lower Murray Region of Southern Australia.- Applying the What If? Planning Support System for Better Understanding Urban Fringe Growth.- Landscape Visualisation.- Understanding Place and Agreeing Purpose: the Role of Virtual Worlds.- Geographic Landscape Visualisation in Planning Adaptation to Climate Change in Victoria, Australia.- Visualising Alternative Futures.- Virtual Globes: the Next GIS?.- A Virtual Knowledge World for Natural Resource Management.- Computer Games for Interacting with a Rural Landscape.- Automated Generation of Enhanced Virtual Environments for Collaborative Decision Making Via a Live Link to GIS.- Land Use Decision Making in a Virtual Environment.