M. A. Sanz

Examples of landscape indicators for assessing environmental conditions and problems in urban and suburban areas

Gee-indicators can help to assess environmental conditions in city urban and suburban areas, Those indicators should be meaningful for understanding environmental changes. From examples of Spanish and American cities, geoindicators for assessing environmental conditions and changes in urban and suburban areas are proposed. The paper explore two types of gee-indicators. The first type presents general information that can be used to indicate the presence of a broad array of geologic conditions, either favouring or limiting various kinds of uses of the land. The second type of gee-indicator is the one most commonly used, and as a group most easily understood; these are site and problem specific and they are generally used after a problem is identified. Among them, watershed processes, seismicity and physiogrqphic diversity are explained in more detail. A second dimension that is considered when discussing gee-indicators is the issue of scale. Broad scale investigations, covering extensive areas are only efficient at cataloging general conditions common to much of the area or some outstanding feature within the area. This type of information is best used for policy type decisions. Detailed scale investigations can provide information about local conditions, but are not efficient at cataloging vast areas. Information gathered at the detailed level is necessary for project design and construction.

Proposal for an inventory of geomorphological heritage in Castilla-La Mancha Region, Spain.

Geological and geomorphological heritage protection has been frequently considered a last-rate priority by organisations and governments, either within their general policy for heritage conservation or particularly within the conservation of nature. In spite of this complaint, a change of this tendency is taking place during the last few years. The growing interest for geological heritage can be seen from the definition of Geosites as a specific form of World Heritage by UNESCO. In addition, a much broader attention to this subject has been paid by the scientific community, environmental educators or the ecotourism sector. The legislation of Castilla–La Mancha Region, Spain, considers the geo(morpho)logical environment to be an important component of Nature. This is the first region in Spain that makes explicit a mandate for the protection of specific landforms. This paper describes the procedures and outcomes of a research project that constitutes the first implementation of this law, concerning the inventory of landforms from their ‘natural heritage’ point of view.

Volcanic risk zoning in the island of Ischia (Italy)

Ischia constitutes the largest and more populated island of the Neapolitan archipelago. As other active volcanic areas along the middle-west Italian coast (Somma-Vesuvius and Phlegrean Fields), the volcanic activity of Ischia stems from deep fractures associated with the Tyrrhenian sea-floor spreading over the last 10 million years. The record of historic eruptions along with signs of thermal activity show that there is a potential for hazardous volcanic events. The paper constitutes a first approach to the zoning of the volcanic risk of the island, by considering the three main factors involved — the elements at risk, or value (population), the hazard posed by the volcanic phenomena, and the degree of damage resulting from the hazard (vulnerability). The analysis of the hazard was carried out by using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques and eruptive models. The analysis was based not only on the evaluation of the probability of occurrence of a fiture new eruption within the island, but also on the evaluation of the probability of occurrence of different intensities and topologies. As those topologies have different energy and potential for destruction, they also condition the vulnerability of the value, which is different for each volcanic phenomenon. The results show lower volcanic risk levels than for similar volcanic areas, However, if two characteristics of the analysed territory are taken into account —the high tourist affluence and the insularity-, then the risk shouldn’t be underestimated.