Thomas Jekel

Quantifying and Qualifying Urban Green by Integrating Remote Sensing, GIS, and Social Science Method

Sustainable urban planning in growing urban agglomerations encompasses the active development of urban green spaces. The loss of urban green not only threatens urban climate and ecosystems, but may also affect a citys image and the residential satisfaction in general. Quantifiable information about green structures and the amount and distribution of green spaces is essential for sustainable planning. Monitoring tools for outlining differences in urban green space are required, which - more than merely measuring the overall percentage of green - may reflect the different importance of green areas in specific environments. This implies both spatial explicit characteri- zations of green areas and the consideration of relative importance of certain green structures from a citizens perspective. In this chapter we will present two approaches for advanced urban green mapping in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Arizona, USA (PHX-US), and Salzburg, Austria, Europe (SBG-AT). The

Austria: Links Between Research Institutions and Secondary Schools for Geoinformation Research and Practice

In this chapter, we discuss the role of links between research institutions and secondary schools in the field of GI-based research. It is argued that both students and researchers greatly profit from this collaboration as part of science education, and that this model may enhance the prospects of GI in secondary education. Three research projects are presented, giving first ideas for a wider application of student-led research at secondary school level.