Optimising rural land health: From landscape policy to community land use decision-making

Implementation of sustainable landscape policy directions can be held back by various constraints. These limitations may include: an absence of reliable integrated landscape character predictions, unproductive tensions arising from poorly informed public and institutional debate, low levels of political resolve due to uncertainty, and limitations on program and project design due to either inadequate availability, or ineffective use of ecological and social data. The need for new methodologies to speed the attainment of sustainable land use is pressing when considered in the context of information indicating that the condition of the world's ecosystems remains in decline. This decline is measurable by the changes in ecosystem services. Taking an ecosystem services view offers an opportunity to address some of the limitations noted earlier. The ecosystem services concept links natural resource management more clearly to the broader functionality of natural systems. Ecosystem services like clean water, productive soils and distinct flora and fauna are generated or maintained by healthy functioning ecosystems. Dwelling on these services and the practices that alter them defines the reasons for natural resource management. Modelling these ecosystems and their services is the key way to understanding these relationships. The utilisation of land use modelling methods to inform, and be informed by community and stakeholder landscape preferences, represents a potential step forward in the evolution of approaches to deliver sustainable landscape policy objectives. This paper presents a summary of examples of a multi-criteria land use optimisation technique that has been used to envision land use combinations most likely to achieve sustainable landscapes in Germany. A number of the sustainable landscape principles arising from Victoria's rural land stewardship project, such as use of an ecosystem services framework to better inform long-term land use planning along with calls to better connect community input to landscape function and land use decisions, are also considered.     

基于区域生态系统健康评估的土地利用 规划研究——以北京市为例

健康的区域生态系统能持续提供生态系统服务,是实现城市可持续发展的基础。同时,城市土地利用直接影响区域生态系统的健康状态,因此如何在健康视角下合理规划与协调城市土地利用方式,成为风景园林与城市规划领域的重点研究课题。以北京市为例,基于2007和2017年的土地利用类型,采用CA-Markov模型对2027年自然发展、快速发展、多目标保护和森林建设4种土地利用情景进行预测,统筹生态系统的物理健康与功能健康评价,构建区域生态系统健康评估框架,探讨4种土地利用情景下更健康的城市土地利用规划新方法。结果表明,与2017年健康状态相比,北京市快速发展情景的区域生态系统健康评估结果呈现负值,其他情景下均呈现良好的增长趋势,森林建设情景下增长最为明显。坚持生态优先、绿色发展、集约化发展建设用地和加强森林建设,可大幅提升区域生态系统的健康状态。     

NATURAL RESOURCE ASSET MANAGEMENT AND LAND AND SPATIAL PLANNING

At the beginning, the author examines the concepts of natural environment, natural resource, and natural resource asset and the ecological services what natural resources could provide as ecosystems, including supporting services, provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services. The author stresses that, in China, the survey and assessment of resource assets face many difficulties in defining ownerships and tenures, rights and responsibilities, and valuation, and extensive exploitation and utilization still dominates the country’s natural resource management. He argues that ecological damage and environmental degradation often resulted from overexploitation of resources; on the whole, China’s recent ecological restoration has not seen a substantial improvement, largely resulting from the separate and inconsistent practice, ill enforcement, and the weak public awareness of ecological remediation and restoration in the country. He highlights that China’s new reform of a Super-Ministry System (including the establishments of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment), as well as the implementation of the Integrated Planning policy, has facilitated an integrated management on natural resource conservation. Finally, the author underscores that, in the future, the Chinese government ought to coordinate its land and spatial planning with domestic socio-economic planning, and urban planning professionals are expected to go beyond engineering and technical explorations and realize planning approaches as tools that would truly and efficiently cope with societal challenges and improve the quality of development.     

生态系统服务制图单元如何更好地支持风景园林规划设计？

若对生态系统服务（Ecosystem Services,简称ESs）制图单元没有清晰的认识,将有碍于ESs制图结果在风景园林实践中的应用水平。通过系统性评述,综述近11年106篇与ESs制图相关的SCI文章,并将现有ESs制图单元归纳为4种常见类型和3种单元规模。研究发现：在3种风景园林实践的尺度上,ESs制图单元表现出不同的选择优先性,以及对风景园林实践需求回应的不足。对于ESs制图单元的选择,提出3个实践尺度上可能的解决方法以更好地支持风景园林规划设计,包括：引入更多与土地利用单元细节相关的信息参与ESs制图或在明确的地块内进行ESs评估,基于地理/生物物理特征对土地利用单元进行细分以形成具有生态意义的空间单元,以及构建与现实中已有规划管理边界相对应且支持相关生态过程并包含完整生态系统的空间单元。研究结果能够为提升ESs知识在风景园林实践中的应用水平提供新的思路和借鉴。     

融合生态服务与游憩功能的城郊绿色基础设施用地系统规划 研究 ——以眉山市岷东新区非集中建设区为例

城郊绿色基础设施兼具城乡生态 服务与游憩功能,孤立或对立审视此二功能 会导致过度开发或机械被动保护,有机融合 则会促进城郊自然环境资源的高效保护与利 用。结合文献研究与案例分析,论文详细阐 释了融合生态服务与游憩功能的绿色基础设 施用地规划理念及技术方法：一、目标定位, 融合资源保护、生态服务、游憩休闲等复合目 标;二、现状分析,甄别绿色基础设施用地 保护要素与空间格局;三、功能设置环节,因 地植入维护要素系统自然生态过程的游憩功 能;四、用地组织层面,带动游憩产业发展的 同时提升其支持、供给、调节、文化四大生态 功能服务水平。     

Raj Days to Downunder: Voices from Anglo India to New Zealand

This paper investigates the shared knowledge held by a rural population of the ecosystem services supplied by rural landscapes and woods in the Rome Province of Italy. It is part of a wider research initiative conducted to estimate the non-use values of the same ecosystem services elicited through the contingent valuation method. Our findings demonstrate that: (i) most of the information on ecosystem services comes from a deep-seated community shared knowledge; (ii) some gaps exist between official (scientific/normative) and shared knowledge in the study site; and (iii) stated economic preferences are driven by both consequential motivations, as predicted by the standard economic model, as well as some others. Making explicit the motivational framework behind environmental economic estimates allows one to represent the socio-cultural legacy indispensable for providing a monetary value useful to inform public decision and policies. The use of this approach could contribute to the development of payment for ecosystem services schemes in rural policies affecting common goods.     

Incorporating ecological sustainability into landscape planning

The ecological component is crucial in landscape planning according to the principles of sustainable development. We define “ecologically sustainable landscape” and develop a tool to measure how ecological sustainability is incorporated in landscape plans. This method acknowledges the critical role of spatial scale and pattern to the conservation of biodiversity. The metapopulation concept is used as a spatially explicit ecological theory, appropriate to describe the relation between biodiversity and the pattern of ecosystem patches (“ecosystem network”) in intensively used regions. We propose that ecological sustainability is achieved if quality, area and configuration of the ecosystem network permit target species to persist. A simple decision-making model represents a theoretical framework for a tool comprising two sets of ecological indicators. One set indicates the awareness of actors to consider ecological principles of sustainable planning. The other set indicates their performance to apply these principles quantitatively in designing the ecosystem pattern. The method is applied on a sample of reports on Dutch landscape development plans. A majority of the reports shows awareness of the importance of spatial conditions for achieving planning goals, but perform inadequately on the quantitative indicators. We conclude that the tool could be developed as a guideline and assessment method for the ecological sustainability of landscape plans.     

APPLICATION OF RESEARCH ON ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN LA NDSCAPE PLANNING

Landscape planning adjusts spatial structures and functions by altering the types of land use / land cover and the patterns of landscapes, and thus further impacts ecosystem services. This paper examines the impacts of landscape planning on ecosystem services and draws the conclusion that the control over the types of land use / land cover, the altering of landscape patterns, and the adjustment of landscape functional characteristics could change the type, quality, and performance of ecosystem services, respectively. Through an overall review on the application of ecosystem service evaluation, spatial mapping, and scenario simulation, this paper further concludes their roles in landscape planning: ecosystem service evaluation provides means to ensure scientific landscape planning; spatial mapping serves as a basis to the decision making; and scenario simulation visualizes all kinds of possibilities for an optimal choice. At the same time, such applications in landscape planning practices, ranging from green space planning, ecological conservation redline planning, land use planning to biodiversity protection planning, are exemplified. Finally, this paper summarizes existing research findings and limitations and proposes that future research is expected to study the relationship between landscape planning and ecosystem services, to build a dynamic composite planning framework that can improve ecosystem services, and to propel the research on the tradeoff-and-synergy among ecosystem services in landscape planning.     

基于ESs的城市自然健康效益研究： 服务功效、级联逻辑与评估框架

城市自然有益人体健康,并成为风景园林领域参与公共健康事务的一种有效干预途径。系统梳理MA《千禧年生态系统服务评价》和IPBES《生物多样性与生态系统服务全球评估报告》中有关城市自然、生态系统服务与健康的理论联系,并区分与归纳城市自然对人体健康的潜在服务功能和实际服务功能,从生态系统服务视角提出自然-健康效益实现的“自然属性-自然潜能-自然暴露-自然使用-健康效益”级联转化逻辑与关联过程。最后提出自然健康效益研究的集成评估框架、评估环节与模型方法,以期为自然健康效益研究提供系统性分析理论逻辑框架。     

“冲突”抑或“协作”——生态博弈机制下的城市开发边界划定路径

自然资源紧约束增强背景下,基于生态视角划定城市开发边界的必要性已渐成共识,但既往研究较少考量生态机制用于边界设定的复杂性,即同一用地承载多样生态功能、功能间存在彼此增益的互助或此消彼长的竞争。对此,为统筹各服务功能保护与使用的均衡效益,本文通过生态系统服务(ESs)价值当量评价与协同权衡机制多元统计解析,推演较优生态博弈情景及约束条件,并交予元胞自动机(CCA)动态模拟,构建了ESs-CCA划定路径。杭州实例证明:"协作"模式限定的开发边界能精准规避高生态价值联合区域、有序释放非"冲突"低成本相交地区,科学配置自然资源"量"的价值分级和生态系统"质"的机制供给,为生态文明建设与国土空间规划编制提供技术、决策支持。     

Comprehensive concept planning of urban greening based on ecological principles: a case study in Beijing, China

Greenspace is an important part of complex urban ecosystems and provides significant ecosystem services. It benefits urban communities environmentally, esthetically, recreationally and economically. Beijing Province is in north of China, and has a total area of 16,807.8 km² and a population of about 13.8 million. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for urban greening of Beijing Province based on landscape ecological principles. It attempts to answer how to establish an urban greening plan at the regional, city and neighborhood levels to achieve long-term sustainability. At the regional level, a big natural and semi-natural forest area in the northwest and an ecological buffer belt in the southeast are planned to protect the environmental quality of Beijing and provide habitats for wildlife. At the city level, a green network system of green wedges, parks and green corridors has been proposed. This green network helps to limit future urban expansion, improve urban environmental quality and serve as habitats and migration routes for wildlife. At the neighborhood level, green extensions and connections of riverside greenway, road greenway, parks and vertical greening permeate into the built-up areas. They provide open space close to residential areas and offer places for recreation. This three-level green system constitutes an integrated ecological network for urban sustainable development of Beijing. For future development of Beijing, urban parks, forestry, agriculture, water and infrastructure should be planned and designed in an integrated way. After this greenspace plan is legislated and completely realized, Beijing will develop an interconnected and integrated network of urban greenspaces. It has the prospect of achieving the aim of “Green Olympic City 2008” and the long-term goal of developing Beijing towards an “Eco-City”.     

Valuing user external benefits and developing management strategies for metro system underground arcades

Construction efforts in Japan and Europe indicate that metro system underground arcades (metro malls) provide many positive externalities, including landscape preservation, passenger safety and comfort and efficient land usage. Given the extremely high construction costs of metro malls, a comprehensive cost and benefit analysis is essential to facilitate government and vendor investment in their development. A comprehensive benefit analysis not only contributes to project assessment, but also helps develop comprehensive strategies for designing and managing metro malls. This study takes the East Metro Mall in Taipei City as a case study. The user benefits of the East Metro Mall are evaluated by a questionnaire survey and contingent valuation. Using negative binomial regression to calibrate the bid function, this study demonstrates that metro malls provide most benefits for high-income users, females and special-purpose and passing-by shopping trips. The average willingness to pay to use metro mall is 13.76 Taiwan dollars (1 Taiwan dollar ≈ 0.03 US dollar in 2006) per use. The total user benefits of the East Metro Mall thus can be valued at 21.2 million Taiwan dollars annually. Finally, Based on the calibrated bid function, this study presents suggestions regarding the further development of the East Metro Mall. Four strategies are recommended, relating to two areas, namely services and pricing. These strategies can provide guidelines in planning other metro system underground arcades.     

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE LANDSCAPE PERFORMANCE OF DESIGNED ECOLOGIES THROUGH A FIELD OBSERVATION OF SALINE-ALKALI SOIL IMPROVEMENT IN QIAOYUAN PARK OF TIANJIN

The current rapid urbanization leads to a degeneration in natural ecosystems whose regulating, purification, and production services have been seriously damaged. Landscape architecture focusing more on landscape functions and processes in this context is significant to urban environment improvement, by creating more urban parks and green spaces to provide ecological services as benefits rather than cities' burdens. Therefore, Yu Kongjian defined Designed Ecology as a constructed ecosystem or a system of interactions between living creatures (including human beings) and nature by human design, also ecological processes formed by landscape architecture and planning, and an interdisciplinary, cross-scale, and empirical research in a form of landscape. This research examined the landscape performance of saline-alkali soil amelioration in Qiaoyuan Park designed with the Designed Ecology principles by ecological experiments. The results prove that through micro-topography design, the park's constructed ecosystem significantly drains away salt and alkali to the lower areas of the site, both within the pond and across the whole pond system, achieving its design goal. This case study provides models for similar ecological landscape design of urban parks and green spaces.     

基于生态源地与生态廊道优先级评估的生态安全格局构建与优化——以石家庄都市区为例

【目的】构建生态安全格局（ESP）是改善区域生态系统结构和功能,维护生态系统服务的有效措施。近年关于ESP的构建与优化逐渐成为研究热点,但对其中关键因子——生态源地与生态廊道的深入分析仍是一项挑战。【方法】以石家庄都市区为例,基于生态资源综合评价,结合最小累积阻力（MCR）模型构建区域ESP,并根据优先级矩阵,确定其中生态源地与生态廊道的优先级。【结果】结果表明：1）石家庄都市区生态源地的主要用地类型为林地、农田与水体;2）高优先级的生态源地与生态廊道主要集中在西部浅山区与滹沱河沿岸,是需要重点关注与保护的区域。【结论】通过对生态源地与生态廊道优先级排序后进行区域ESP优化,可有效界定区域生态系统维护过程中的关键区域,为未来国土空间规划与生态文明建设深入了解区域生态资源提供助力,并为相应的绿色空间规划提供指导。     

地中海西北海岸线生态系统研究：多维遥感反演土地利用时空演化规律

海岸线生态系统是沿海城市关键的生态安全屏障,如何科学高效地揭示区域海岸线生态系统承载力的变化规律是当前研究所面临的关键性科学问题。以地中海西北海岸线为研究对象,以景观生态学景观格局（斑块、廊道、基质）为理论支撑,建立了60年土地利用数据集,运用遥感技术精准且高效地揭示了多维时间以及地域尺度下的地中海西北海岸线生态系统土地利用演化规律,从技术层面实现了多维度联动解析的突破性创新;同时通过应用景观生态学理论,对海岸线生态系统监控理论体系进行探索。通过对大尺度全球海岸线森林碳储量生态安全现状模型进行评估,揭示了沿海城市基础设施建设规模的缩减对于海岸线生态系统恢复的重大意义;对中小尺度地中海西北海岸线以及代表城市菲格拉斯市和瓦伦西亚市用地性质时空演化模型进行规律推演,得出自然复原力与周边环境具有紧密正相关性。因此必须加强对海岸线生态系统连通性的监测,在不可避免的旅游驱动下,为未来中国海岸线土地管控与建设的优化、沿海城市生态系统的自然复原以及抗灾能力的提升,提供科学、准确、高效的实践理论与技术支撑。     

Recording Manifestations of Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Landscape

Attempts at assessing the values people attach to ecosystems reveal profound methodological gaps regarding the non-material domains associated with aesthetic, spiritual or heritage values. This paper presents a new approach for trying to grasp these intangible benefits—conceptualised as cultural ecosystem services (CES)—based on the assumption that making use of CES leaves discernible marks on the physical landscape. We explore the potential for tracing visible manifestations of CES in a field walk-based landscape analysis. The results provide information on the character, significance, and spatial distribution of CES and allow for analysis in terms of correlations with landscape features or ecosystem services bundles. Based on our results, the method has two main strengths: 1) as an approach suitable for statistical analysis and integration with spatially explicit and quantitative data in comprehensive landscape assessment; and 2) as a simplified version which can generate valuable data for exploratory or complementary uses.     

Reconfiguring the boundaries of the Chapada Diamantina National Park (Brazil) using ecological criteria in the context of a human-dominated landscape

The Chapada Diamantina National Park (Bahia State, Brazil) was created with the intention of protecting beautiful mountain scenery and important water resources, but its boundaries had to be drawn within the context of a highly human-modified landscape. The resulting reserve has a very irregular shape, a low area/perimeter ratio, limited core areas, and excludes neighbouring ecosystems. GIS techniques and extensive field work identified nine distinct areas contiguous with the park boundaries that were subsequently evaluated for potential annexation to the reserve, based on: (1) the lack of significant human habitation or economic use of the land; (2) the biological integrity of these sites, derived by considering the percentage of their land area degraded under four categories of anthropogenic alteration and the time required for natural recuperation; and (3) an enhancement factor that objectively evaluates the ecological benefits of any modification of the reserve. These techniques offered the possibility for re-evaluating the entire region surrounding the park, together with the capacity to precisely delineate new boundaries with high ecological gains for the reserve but with low potential for generating serious conflicts with established human populations. Three areas were recommended for incorporation into the Park, and six for off-reserve conservation management.     

Reconfiguring the boundaries of the Chapada Diamantina National Park (Brazil) using ecological criteria in the context of a human-dominated landscape

The Chapada Diamantina National Park (Bahia State, Brazil) was created with the intention of protecting beautiful mountain scenery and important water resources, but its boundaries had to be drawn within the context of a highly human-modified landscape. The resulting reserve has a very irregular shape, a low area/perimeter ratio, limited core areas, and excludes neighbouring ecosystems. GIS techniques and extensive field work identified nine distinct areas contiguous with the park boundaries that were subsequently evaluated for potential annexation to the reserve, based on: (1) the lack of significant human habitation or economic use of the land; (2) the biological integrity of these sites, derived by considering the percentage of their land area degraded under four categories of anthropogenic alteration and the time required for natural recuperation; and (3) an enhancement factor that objectively evaluates the ecological benefits of any modification of the reserve. These techniques offered the possibility for re-evaluating the entire region surrounding the park, together with the capacity to precisely delineate new boundaries with high ecological gains for the reserve but with low potential for generating serious conflicts with established human populations. Three areas were recommended for incorporation into the Park, and six for off-reserve conservation management.     

Our visual landscape: Managing the landscape under special consideration of visual aspects

Comprehensive landscape valuation requires an integration of ecological, economical and social values. Landscape image does not only comprise its spatial and structural parts but also the formal visual and cultural aesthetic expression of the landscape. In accordance with this holistic image of the landscape the manifestation of these special elements and visual functions is reflective of the natural and cultural coherence and beauty of long functioning natural and cultivated landscape systems.Landscape image and identity on the one hand and its natural or cultural variety (singular appearances of elements, local peculiarities or particulars) on the other hand are the most important criteria for evaluation, classifying and protecting against possible impacts on the local and regional landscape.However, in addition to the desirability of preserving existing landscape identity, the protection of existing elements, space and functions should not blindly rule out the possibility of new developments emerging with new values.Based on this basic idea value ranking of landscape features and individual expression of partial image sectors can be performed on the level of ecological and sustainable land use and planning culture. In landscape planning it is recognised that such a ranking requires a combination with professional judgement, informed opinion and public preferences as well.To ensure the aims of preservation and development of a high-quality nature and culture beauty special methods of analysis and demonstration of the landscape structure and image are requested. The demonstrated methodical steps should correspond to the objective of a sustainable nature and landscape preservation and development on an aesthetic landscape planning level with guidelines and helpful data for the impact assessment and intervention rule (German nature conservation act).     

The role of the spatial dimension within the framework of sustainable landscapes and natural capital

A new paradigm of Natural Capital and Sustainable Landscapes has been suggested. It implies the integration of economic, environmental and social-cultural qualities in a physical setting while focusing on functions in terms of goods and services for people. Due to its anthropocentric perspective it pays less attention to landscape structure and spatial arrangement compared to the widely applied patch-matrix concept. The matrix of land use elements provides the key to understanding land use systems and land use changes and it can play an important role in understanding land use pattern and their dynamics. But one of the remaining constraints for a direct application of landscape ecological concepts in practice is the lack of agreed ways to combine environmental, socio-economic and societal/cultural views. This paper examines both paradigms, asking: does the spatial arrangement of land use types add specific qualities beyond statistical measures of their existence and quantity? For instance, can a landscape be sustainable, as long as 20% of the land use is extensive, 10% is protection area, etc., no matter where the respective patches are, which typical size and shape they have, how connected patches are and how often incompatible land use types are adjacent? This paper elucidates spatial concepts for sustainable landscapes with an emphasis on the role of GIS.