A new design framework is introduced for forest structure optimization based on a genetic algorithm landscape encoding and landscape ecology metrics. Landscape ecology is an important interface between the forest management community, which is a traditional user of operations research methods, and the biological conservation community which is relatively new to OR methods and whose goals are in...

Rural history and implementing agri-policy are mirrored in an agricultural landscape. No doubt, the basic structure and composition of agricultural landscape depends on local climatic and natural conditions. There is a close connection between agricultural landscape management and biodiversity management at the gene, species and habitat level. The purpose of this paper is to present four ways t...

J.C. Azevedo et al. (eds.), Forest Landscapes and Global Change: Challenges for Research and Management, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-0953-7_9, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract In this chapter, we examined forest landscape management from a pragmatic (practical as opposed to idealistic) perspective. The discussion was framed in the context of the landscape: a spatially explici...

Landscape ecology offers a spatially explicit perspective on the relationships between ecological patterns and processes that can be applied across a range of scales. Concepts derived from landscape ecology now permeate ecological research across most levels of ecological organization and many scales. Landscape ecology developed rapidly after ideas that originated in Europe were introduced to s...

The impact of human “life style” on natural system continues to grow and multiply in the last and current century. Our behavior patterns, social attitudes and customs are intertwined with our natural environment. What we do to day, not only involves changes to the existing ecosystems and destroys our environment, but also affects the habitat of the future generations. Old fashioned towns and ru...

Restoring altered forest landscapes toward their ranges of natural variability (RNV) may enhance ecosystem sustainability and resiliency, but such efforts can be hampered by complex land ownership and management patterns. We evaluated restoration potential for southern-boreal forests in the 2.1 million ha Border Lakes Region of northern Minnesota (U.S.A.) and Ontario (Canada), where spatially d...

Natural resource management literature has documented three paradigm shifts over the past decade: from co-management to adaptive co-management and adaptive governance respectively and, more recently, towards landscape governance. The latter is conceived as a governance approach towards negotiated land use at the landscape level to deal with global challenges such as food insecurity, climate cha...

Areawide management has a long history of achieving solutions that target pests, however, there has been little focus on the areawide management of arthropod natural enemies. Landscape ecology studies that show a positive relationship between natural enemy abundance and habitat diversity demonstrate landscape-dependent pest suppression, but have not yet clearly linked their findings to pest man...

Abstract The results of an integrated study aimed at restoring water quality in a large watershed including seven catchments in north east Iran are presented in this paper. This case study demonstrates how landscape metrics reflect direct or surrogate causes of the land use practices that are the determinants of water quality parameters. Water quality factors included EC, pH, Cl-1, HCO3-1, SO4-...