Land change science has emerged as a fundamental component of global environmental change and sustainability research. This interdisciplinary field seeks to understand the dynamics of land cover and land use as a coupled human-environment system to address theory, concepts, models, and applications relevant to environmental and societal problems, including the intersection of the two. The major...

In this paper I describe some of the ways in which landscape ecology principles have been incorporated into land use planning and change. In Scotland we have tried developing landscape-scale or regional plans for land use change to resolve issues of habitat fragmentation – the ‘big plans’ of the title. We have also developed ‘little plans’ – much smaller proposals based on individual designated...

In order to respond to economic, social and environmental challenges, societies need sound and reliable information about their resource "land". The foremost important data set – before taking any strategic or operational decisions – is about who owns a particular piece of land. Such information is to be provided by well-organized and efficient systems such as land registration and cadastre, wh...

Center Attacks Core Issues in the Land of Apples Seattle, Washington, is an area perhaps best known for high-tech names like Microsoft, Immunex, and Amazon.com. However, much of Washington is rural. The state is a leading producer of tree fruit, berry, and flower crops, which require extensive hand labor—picking and prun-ing—for cultivation and harvest. To meet this demand, Washington's populat...

Analyses have been made of the effects of environmental controls and planning at regional, subarea, and project levels. The results obtained at the regional level are reviewed for a proposed highway development around Baltimore, Md. The findings for both short-term and long-term effects of alternative transport policies are summarized in respect of population and employment, economic indicators...

ABSTRACT This paper describes the Active Response GIS (AR/GIS) for resource planning and land­ allocation deliberation. AR/GIS is an integrated system which combines GIS and electronic meeting software. This combination provides the voting, information organization, and brainstorming of an electronic meeting system, and supports interaction with geographic data sets. The AR/GIS system can impro...

Initiated in 1972, the Landsat program has provided a continuous record of earth observation for 35 years. The assemblage of Landsat spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions, over a reasonably sized image extent, results in imagery that can be processed to represent land cover over large areas with an amount of spatial detail that is absolutely unique and indispensable for monitoring, manage...

There is growing interest in sustainability, sustainable development, and sustainable transportation. This paper identifies issues related to the definition, evaluation and implementation of sustainable transportation. Significant issues include the range of definitions of sustainability, the range of issues considered under sustainability, the range of perspectives, criticism of sustainability...

Federal land managers are faced with the task of balancing multiple uses and goals when making decisions about land use and the activities that occur on public lands. Though climate change is now well recognized by federal agencies and their local land and resource managers, it is not yet clear how issues related to climate change will be incorporated into on-the-ground decision making within t...