Giovanni Zurlini

Informing landscape planning and design for sustaining ecosystem services from existing spatial patterns and knowledge

Over the last decade we have seen an increased emphasis in environmental management and policies aimed at maintaining and restoring multiple ecosystem services at landscape scales. This emphasis has resulted from the recognition that management of specific environmental targets and ecosystem services requires an understanding of landscape processes and the spatial scales that maintain those targets and services. Moreover, we have become increasingly aware of the influence of broad-scale drivers such as climate change on landscape processes and the ecosystem services they support. Studies and assessments on the relative success of environmental policies and landscape designs in maintaining landscape processes and ecosystem services is mostly lacking. This likely reflects the relatively high cost of maintaining a commitment to implement and maintain monitoring programs that document responses of landscape processes and ecosystem services to different landscape policies and designs. However, we argue that there is considerable variation in natural and human-caused landscape pattern at local to continental scales and that this variation may facilitate analyses of how environmental targets and ecosystem services have responded to such patterns. Moreover, wall-to-wall spatial data on land cover and land use at national scales may permit characterization and mapping of different landscape pattern gradients. We discuss four broad and interrelated focus areas that should enhance our understanding of how landscape pattern influences ecosystem services: (1) characterizing and mapping landscape pattern gradients; (2) quantifying relationships between landscape patterns and environmental targets and ecosystem services, (3) evaluating landscape patterns with regards to multiple ecosystem services, and (4) applying adaptive management concepts to improve the effectiveness of specific landscape designs in sustaining ecosystem services. We discuss opportunities as well as challenges in each of these four areas. We believe that this agenda could lead to spatially explicit solutions in managing a range of environmental targets and ecosystem services. Spatially explicit options are critical in managing and protecting landscapes, especially given that communities and organizations are often limited in their capacity to make changes at landscape scales. The issues and potential solutions discussed in this paper expand upon the call by Nassauer and Opdam (Landscape Ecol 23:633–644, 2008) to include design as a fundamental element in landscape ecology research by evaluating natural and human-caused (planned or designed) landscape patterns and their influence on ecosystem services. It also expands upon the idea of “learning by doing” to include “learning from what has already been done.”

Highlighting order and disorder in social–ecological landscapes to foster adaptive capacity and sustainability

Landscape sustainability can be considered in terms of order and disorder, where order implies causality, well-defined boundaries and predictable outcomes, while disorder implies uncertain causality, shifting boundaries and often-unpredictable outcomes. We address the interplay of order and disorder in social–ecological landscapes (SELs) using spatiotemporal analysis of entropy-related indices of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index time-series. These indices can provide insights for complex systems analysis for the evaluation of adaptive capacity in SELs. In particular, our overarching aim is to help interpret what an increase of order/disorder means with regards to SELs and the underlying drivers and causes of conditions in SELs. The approach can be used to increase spatially explicit anticipatory capability in environmental science and natural resource management based on how the system has responded to stress in the past. Such capability is crucial to address SEL adaptive capacity and for sustainable planning given that surprises may increase as a consequence of both climate change and multiple interacting anthropogenic stressors. These advancements should greatly contribute to the application of spatial resilience strategies in general, and to sustainable landscape planning in particular, and for the spatially explicit adaptive comanagement of ecosystem services.

Source/sink patterns of disturbance and cross-scale mismatches in a panarchy of social-ecological landscapes

Land-use change is one of the major factors affecting global environmental change and represents a primary human effect on natural systems. Taking into account the scales and patterns of human land uses as source/sink disturbance systems, we describe a framework to characterize and interpret the spatial patterns of disturbances along a continuum of scales in a panarchy of nested jurisdictional social- ecological landscapes (SELs) like region, provinces, and counties. We detect and quantify those scales through the patterns of disturbance relative to land use/land cover exhibited on satellite imagery over a 4- yr period in the Apulia region, South Italy. By using moving windows to measure composition (amount) and spatial configuration (contagion) of disturbance, we identify multiscale disturbance source/sink trajectories in the pattern metric space defined by composition and configuration of disturbance. We group disturbance trajectories along a continuum of scales for each location (pixel) according to broad land-use classes for each SEL level in the panarchy to identify spatial scales and geographical regions where disturbance is more or less concentrated in space indicating disturbance sources, sinks, and mismatches. We also group locations by clustering, and results are compared in the same pattern space and interpreted with respect to disturbance trajectories derived from random, multifractal and hierarchical neutral models. We show that in the real geographical world spatial mismatches of disturbances can occur at particular scale ranges because of cross scale disparities in land uses for the amount and contagion of disturbance, leading to more or less exacerbation of contrasting source/sink systems along certain scale domains. All cross-scale source/sink issues can produce both negative and positive effects on the scales above and below their levels, i.e., cross-scale effects. Through the framework outlined in our examples, managers, as well as stakeholders belonging to SELs in the panarchy, can be aware of specific scale ranges of disturbance where mismatches might occur and that will help them to value where and how to intervene in the panarchy of SELs to enhance the benefits and to minimize negative effects.

Chemical footprints of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition on recent soil C : N ratios in Europe

Long-term human interactions with the natural landscape have produced a plethora of trends and patterns of environmental disturbances across time and space. Nitrogen deposition, closely tracking energy and land use, is known to be among the main drivers of pollution, affecting both freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. We present a statistical approach for investigating the historical and geographical distribution of nitrogen deposition and the impacts of accumulation on recent soil carbon-to-nitrogen ratios in Europe. After the second Industrial Revolution, large swaths of land emerged characterized by different atmospheric deposition patterns caused by industrial activities or intensive agriculture. Nitrogen deposition affects soil C : N ratios in a still recognizable way despite the abatement of oxidized and reduced nitrogen emissions during the last 2 decades. Given a seemingly disparate land-use history, we focused on ∼ 10 000 unmanaged ecosystems, providing statistical evidence for a rapid response of nature to the chronic nitrogen supply through atmospheric deposition.

Contributions of Landscape Sciences to the Development of Environmental Security

determinant of security, especially given the emergence of new political, economic, social, and environmental challenges since the end of the cold war. The relationship between environment and security now is a common interest among both the scientific and policymaking communities, supported by the fact that the traditional security concepts based on territorial integrity and political sovereignty have been revisited following the changes in the geopolitical landscape at the end of the last century. Security generally is related to both a perception of freedom from risk and freedom from anxiety or fear. Security aims at providing expected services, safety, and protecting valuable assets from harm, even during times of increased threat or risk. Security is achieved through both prospective (preventative) and retrospective (mitigation) actions on the part of governments, agencies, and people. Perceptions of security by individuals, communities, and societies are strongly linked to human well-being and to the satisfaction of the population. The notion of environmental security has been historically linked to inter-national conflicts caused by environmental degradation, e.g. through overuse of renewable resources, pollution, or impoverishment in the space of living (Tuchel, 2004; Herrero, 2006; Liotta, 2006). In this context, the concept of environmental security has been developed mainly by international policy researchers and has focused on the role of the scarcity of renewable resources such as cropland, forests, water, and fish stocks. Statistical data demonstrate that agriculture and natural resource availability plays an important role in many events of acute violence, which often occur in rural areas (De Soysa et al., 1999). Therefore, attention has been devoted to the theoretical analysis of possible pathways that lead to loss of environmental security, beginning with scarcity and leading to outbreaks of violence. Thus, environmental security has been discussed as a concept of international security policy (Brauch, 2006). This debate began in the late 1980s and has been quite intense. Recently, environmental security issues received increasing worldwide interest by govern-ments, scientific institutions, intergovernmental organizations, and nongovern-mental groups, calling for greater attention to the potential threats to security posed by environmental problems (Dabelko, 2004; Matthew et al., 2004, UNEP, 2004). The decrease in quantity and quality of resources, rapid global population growth, and unequal access to resources are the basic drivers behind increasing environment-related security risks. Notably renewable resources like water and land are crucial factors in security issues, especially with respect to instability and migration between and within countries or regions. Moreover, environmental degradation often results in changes in important ecological and landscape processes that can have irreversible impacts to critical renewable resources such as water, fiber, food, and clean air. This can lead to a relatively permanent loss

Empirical assessment of adaptation to climate change impacts of mountain households: development and application of an Adaptation Capability Index

The present study proposes an index to assess the potential for adaptation to climate change for households in the mountainous regions. The index provides a realistic approach to recognize social and natural factors which contribute to successful adaptation and addresses several household functions, such as social networking, livelihood strategy, adjustment strategies, resource availability and accessibility. The proposed Adaptation Capability Index (ACI) is analytically defined, mathematically formulated and field tested on mountainous households in urban and semi-urban regions of the Uttarakhand Himalaya in India. To gather data on the topic relevant to the ACI, a household scale questionnaire was developed and administered to 120 heads of households through face-to-face interviews. The results highlight higher adaptive capability of urban households and low adaptation capacity of rural households due to poor farm productivity, low accessibility and availability of resources and technological input. Future programs and policies must include and implement regulations to remedy attributive factors responsible for higher adaptation. This paper may be applicable to other mountainous regions and may provide insights for effective adaptation strategies to climate change.

Socio-ecological Vulnerability of Smallholders due to Climate Change in Mountains: Agroforestry as an Adaptation Measure

Abstract The present study aims to assess the socioecological vulnerability of smallholders through an index of Tehri Garhwal Himalaya. The index provides a realistic approach to recognize the contributions of social and ecological factors for household welfare vulnerability to climate change. The approach puts forward various indices for each component of vulnerability to climate change - exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity including two more indices: one for overall impact under the exposure of climate change and another for overall vulnerability. The five indices were proposed to assess the vulnerability status of with and without agroforestry practicing households in Himalayan region. These indices are based on 35 indicators (8 for exposure; 12 for sensitivity, 15 for adaptive capacity), selected through inductive approaches. A questionnaire for households was designed for the above aim and was administered to 121 heads of households through face-toface interviews with 77 households practicing agroforestry and 44 without agroforestry. The questionnaire dealt the general household information, and indicators of the vulnerability including the issues related to agroforestry. The results highlight slightly higher adaptive capacity of agroforestry practicing households due to specific contribution of agroforestry. The low contribution of agroforestry among smallholders was due to small land holding. The study also results that remoteness, specific issues of smallholders’ such as poverty, education and employment are responsible for the present condition. In particular this study clearly shows that poverty is the key driver for vulnerability. All of these issues can be addressed if future programs and policies, include and implement regulations to remedy attributive factors. This paper may be applicable to other mountainous regions providing insights for effective adaptation strategies to climate change.

Spectral entropy, ecological resilience, and adaptive capacity for understanding, evaluating, and managing ecosystem stability and change

Spectral entropy, ecological resilience, and adaptive capacity for understanding, evaluating, and managing ecosystem stability and change G IOVANNI ZURL IN I 1 , BA I L IAN L I 2 , N ICOLA ZACCARELL I 1 and IRENE PETROSILLO Landscape Ecology Laboratory, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, Ecotekne, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, Ecological Complexity and Modeling Laboratory, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0124, USA

Cross-European landscape analyses: illustrative examples using existing spatial data

Thirty-nine landscape metrics related to (1) conditions of terrestrial habitat, water quality, and ecosystem productivity, (2) potential pressures on or stresses to environmental resources, and (3) changes in conditions, were generated

Ecological Risk Assessment Through Landscape Science Approaches

Risk assessment of landscape biological integrity, associated with ecotypes or ecotype mosaics, is addressed by simple multi-scale conceptual models incorporating metrics related to current human disturbance, based on native species most threatened with extinction and reduction. We aim at identifying gaps in the Italian existing reserve network to establish new reserves and protected areas to get a more representative network of regional biological diversity, based on (1) their “natural values”, and (2) “fragility”. Distribution maps of habitat sensitivity and fragility give policy makers and land managers information on impacts their land-use decisions will have on existing risks to biological integrity. Such approaches have application in Central Asian ecological evaluation and environmental decision-making.