Landscape Aesthetics Research Articles

Traffic Calming as a Comprehensive Solution Improving Traffic Road Safety

The purpose of the article is presentation of various aspects of improvement of traffic calming solutions on traffic safety and the results of implementations of these solutions. The paper is a review of methods and measures on improving traffic safety. The main implementation criterion of traffic calming solutions to improve the state is often urban traffic safety. Traffic calming solutions significantly reduce the number of accident victims (ie. fatalities and serious injuries). The key to achieving these effects is reducing speed, adjusting speed to street character and function, and transforming road and street infrastructure, which forces to drive slower and improves the quality of the urban environment. The implementation of the area conception of traffic calming is often linked to the process of urban transformation and revitalization of the area. Solutions of traffic calming in Poland in all forms including: zones 50, zones 30-40, inhabitant zones (20 km/h) as well as shared spaces improve the traffic safety, reduce the accident risk and simultaneously improve the environmental conditions of residential areas, promote the increasing of cycling, public transport and pedestrian traffic as well the aesthetics of the urban landscape. The best results bring solutions of traffic calming on the implementation on the transit roads passing through the small cities and in urban centres. The effectiveness of solutions of traffic calming in the aspect of safety must be systematically evaluated, due to their relaxation, because drivers get used to it and increase the speed of travel.

The Aesthetics of landscape

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The Influence of Rainy Atmosphere on the Aesthetics of Landscape

The researcher lived in Ha'il in Saudi Arabia for six consecutive years and this city has a great impact on her artistic vision. There is a difference in the nature of the geographic location and differences in traditions that she was used to in Egypt. The most influential was the depth of the open landscapes, the joy of the people over there by rainfall, which appears on the face of the homogeneous nature of the sky, which extends over mountains and sand embracing shrubs, plants, and flowers. All this made Ha'il an exceptional place.

基于生态系统服务的山水林田湖草生态保护修复研究——以南太行地区鹤山区为例

PDF HTML阅读 XML下载 导出引用 引用提醒 基于生态系统服务的山水林田湖草生态保护修复研究——以南太行地区鹤山区为例 DOI: 10.5846/stxb201905281102 作者: 作者单位: 作者简介: 通讯作者: 中图分类号: 基金项目: 国家自然科学基金项目（41371226） Ecological protection and restoration of mountains-rivers-forests-farmlands-lakes-grasslands based on ecosystem services-utilizing Heshan section of the south Taihang area as an example Author: Affiliation: Fund Project: 摘要 | 图/表 | 访问统计 | 参考文献 | 相似文献 | 引证文献 | 资源附件 | 文章评论 摘要:开展山水林田湖草生态保护修复是生态文明建设的重要内容，将生态系统服务评价成果与山水林田湖草生态保护修复工程相结合，以国家第三批山水林田湖草生态保护修复试点-河南省南太行地区鹤山区为例，探究生态系统服务评价成果在区域山水林田湖草生态保护修复中的应用。结果表明，近年来鹤山区生态系统服务价值整体呈下降趋势且生态环境破坏严重。其中，2014-2017年鹤山区各土地类型二级服务ESV减少了303.95万元。研究期内，水资源供给、气体调节功能、气候调节、净化环境、水文调节、土壤保持、生物多样性和美学景观等8项生态服务价值都出现不同程度的下降；在鹤山区生态保护修复工作中需要重点关注生态系统的水文调节、净化环境、土壤保持和生物多样性等服务功能，相应的生态保护修复工程应集中在河道生态修复与湿地保护、矿山生态环境修复与土地整治、森林及生物多样性保护修复；鹤山区山水林田湖草生态保护修复工程能够提升区域生态服务价值。其中，工程实施后的生态系统服务价值总量预计能达到36407.95万元，比2017年增加7741.96万元，增长率为27%且各项生态服务价值均有提升。研究结果对鹤山区山水林田湖草生态保护修复工程的实施有一定的指导性作用。 Abstract:Ecological protection and restoration of mountain, river, forest, farmland, lake, and grassland are important parts of ecological civilization construction. This paper combines the evaluation of ecosystem services with ecological protection and restoration projects. Taking the third batch of national pilot projects of ecological protection and restoration of mountain, river, forest, farmland, lake, and grassland in Heshan District of South Taihang of Henan Province as an example, it explores the application of ecosystem service evaluation to ecological protection and restoration.The results show that the ecosystem service value of Heshan District has declined and the ecological environment has been seriously damaged in recent years. From 2014 to 2017, the ecosystem service value of secondary services for different land types in Heshan District decreased by 3039500 yuan. During the research period, the value of eight ecological services declined by varying degrees, including supply of water resources, gas regulation, climate regulation, purification environment, hydrological regulation, soil conservation, biodiversity, and aesthetic landscape. The results of this study on ecological protection and restoration in Heshan District indicate that attention should be paid to the service functions of hydrological regulation, purification environment, soil conservation, and ecosystem biodiversity. Ecological protection and restoration projects should focus on river ecological restoration and wetland protection, mine ecological environment restoration and land reclamation, forest and biodiversity conservation and restoration; mountains-rivers-forests-farmlands-lakes-grasslands ecological protection and restoration projects in Heshan District can enhance the value of regional ecological services. Among them, the total value of ecosystem services after implementation is expected to reach 364079500 yuan, an increase of 77419600 yuan over 2017, representing a growth rate of 27% and improved value of various ecosystem services. These results will play a guiding role in the implementation of ecological protection and restoration projects of mountains-rivers-forests-farmlands-lakes-grasslands in Heshan District. 参考文献 相似文献 引证文献

Ecological Health of Wetland Ecosystem: An overview

Wetlands are unique, productive ecosystems where terrestrial and aquatic habitats meet. Wetlands play a critical role in maintaining many natural cycles and supporting a wide range of biodiversity. Wetlands can also contribute to the wellbeing of the community by acting as urban green spaces which provide aesthetic appeal, landscape diversity and recreational opportunities. Globally wetlands are under threat due to altered hydrology, destruction of vegetation, fragmentation, dumping of waste, being drained and other anthropogenic reasons. Wetlands provide numerous ecological goods and services but are under tremendous stress due to rapid urbanization, industrialization and agricultural intensification. An inventory of wetlands of any region is a pre-requisite for their conservation and management. One of the aims of monitoring is to provide information for ecological assessment, which can provide early warning of changes that could negatively affect species or ecosystems.

“Inte­resting” in the Aesthetic Landscape of the City

The article examines the aesthetic category of “interesting” as a dominant of urban environment development. The authors try to comprehend this category from the point of view of cultural know­ledge. The article includes a theoretical section, where, basing on well-known concepts, the authors outline the principles of embedding the “interesting”, as something aesthetics and artistic, in the postmo­dern fabric of modern megacities. The analytical part of the article is based on specific examples represen­ted by urban cultural landscapes, by the post­modern clash of art and non-art in urban space, by event communications and other forms of urban culture representation. The study resulted in designation of one of the main problems of modern cities: as a result of their excessive saturation with “interesting”, there can be observed a gro­wing cultural and aesthetic insensitivity to the “inte­resting” among their citizens.From the methodological point of view, the study revealed that, in interpretation of modern phenomena of socio-cultural reality, it is not enough to proceed from the basic principles of a particular science. So, the interdisciplinary approach, as a methodolo­gical resource in demand today, allows revealing, by the example of the concept of “inte­resting”, the interconnection and interdependence of the methodological approaches of aesthetics and culturology for stu­dying the cultural environment of modern cities.The authors analyze the “interesting” as an instrument of influencing on the cultural environment of the city and the perception of its text. As a result, the “interesting” intensifies the nonlinearity and fractality of urban space. On the example of Russian ci­ties development, the article reveals that the formation of a new cultural environment is always connected not only with changing of artistic design solutions or/and aesthetics trends. The authors prove that the need for “interesting” widens the frames of the subject field of aesthetics. The “interesting” is moving to the cen­ter of interdisciplinary cultural studies.

The Ecocritical Implications of Downing's Influence on Poe's Landscape Aesthetic

Abstract This article examines the influence of landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing's seminal work, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1841), on Poe's landscape tales. Poe knew this book through reading a review in Arcturus appearing in the same year and, as strong evidence suggests, through perusing Downing's tract firsthand sometime before 1843. Looking at the affinities between Downing's and Poe's aesthetic principles, we may see that Downing's landscape gardening theory profoundly influenced Poe's later fiction and validated his belief in the powerful role of the artist in the creation of Beauty. Two landscape tales, in particular, demonstrate the correlation between Poe's writing and the principles of landscape gardening popularized in his time: “The Domain of Arnheim” of 1847, and its “pendant,” “Landor's Cottage” of 1849. Situating Poe's work in the context of landscape gardening—first by establishing Downing's influence on Poe and then by examining the environmental impact of their idealized landscapes—we may see how both literary and horticultural texts echoed the broader culture's demand for a composed American landscape without considering the environmental consequences of putting these aesthetic theories into practice.

Does Adding Local Tree Elements into Dwellings Enhance Individuals’ Homesickness? Scenario-Visualisation for Developing Sustainable Rural Landscapes

Rural residential settings are important elements of livable and sustainable rural areas across the world. Enhancing people’s attachment to these landscapes through fostering feelings of homesickness could help in the pursuit of better rural residential settings. We studied homesickness, an emotion found to be associated with higher place attachment and quality of life, related to rural landscapes in southeast China, looking specifically at the presence and configuration of rural dwellings and trees. We used Photoshop to manipulate different configurations of typical rural dwellings and trees, and three series with twelve types of landscape scenes were generated. We looked at the following six emotional factors linked to homesickness: naturalness; regional culture; identity; psychology; experience; and landscape aesthetics. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and semantic differential (SD) methods were used to evaluate the level in which the landscape evoked feelings of homesickness amongst study participants, i.e., a group of university students from different disciplines. Results show that the homesickness emotional response level was higher in most of the simulated landscapes, as compared to the original landscape, and that response levels differed significantly between the three types of visualized landscape configurations. The emotional response level showed differences for manipulated landscape scenes with twelve different trees added to dwellings. Through cluster analysis of the results, we divided trees into three grades of emotional response for each dwelling type. Adding trees thus was found to change the emotional response to the landscape, and different tree configurations with different types of dwellings results in different responses. The study shows that careful design of the rural landscape can help build stronger emotional relations of humans with their local environment, which is a key ingredient for sustainable countryside living.

Особливості впливу середовища на оцінювання естетичних якостей паркових пейзажів: теоретичні та прикладні аспекти

Наведено спектр досліджень естетичного оцінювання ландшафту із залученням респондентів (42 особи), які здійснено упродовж 2017-2018 рр. безпосередньо в парковому середовищі та із застосуванням фотографій. Враховуючи різні методологічні підходи та за результатами порівняльного аналізу особливостей сприйняття пейзажів паркового середовища, виявлено взаємозв’язки між естетичною оцінкою паркового ландшафту та ознаками, які впливають на її формування.
 За результатами узагальнень теоретичних та практичних наукових робіт виявлено принципову різницю у методології досліджень естетики паркових ландшафтів із залученням респондентів. Ключовим методологічним питанням дослідження естетики паркового середовища є визначення способу проведення досліджень – натурний, або заміщення.
 Встановлено, що за умов оцінювання паркового середовища безпосередньо в парку оцінка знижується порівняно з фотографіями. За аналізом частоти згадувань ознак та характеристик, які позитивно впливають на естетику пейзажів Маріїнського парку, визначено їх подібність упродовж різних сезонів за умов проведення оцінювання в середовищі та суттєві відмінності під час застосування фото. Отримані результати можуть бути свідченням подібності сприйняття паркового середовища упродовж року безпосередньо в парку. Поряд із тим, виявлено суттєві відмінності у частоті згадувань низки ознак у межах кожного сезону за умов застосування різних способів досліджень. Незважаючи на суттєву різницю у частоті згадувань ознак паркового середовища за різних умов та способів проведення досліджень, встановлено, що сила впливу конкретної ознаки на естетичні якості пейзажів не визначає її факторну вагу в оцінці, однак пов’язана із нею. Окрім того, виявлено ознаки, вплив яких на естетичну оцінку паркового середовища є суттєвим.
 Застосування фотографій є доцільним для визначення сприйняття колориту та образно-символічної структури пейзажів паркового середовища відвідувачами, а оцінювання впливу насаджень та архітектурних компонентів на естетичні якості пейзажів варто проводити безпосередньо в парку. Оцінювання задоволеності відвідувачів парку станом його компонентів можна здійснювати із застосуванням фотографій, або безпосередньо в парку за комфортних для людини умов (весняно-літній період).

Development of a participatory Green Infrastructure design, visualization and evaluation system in a cloud supported jupyter notebook computing environment

Land use planners, landscape architects, and water resource managers are using Green Infrastructure (GI) designs in urban environments to promote ecosystem services including mitigation of storm water flooding and water quality degradation. An expanded set of urban sustainability goals also includes increasing carbon sequestration, songbird habitat, reducing urban heat island effects, and improvement of landscape aesthetics. GI is conceptualized to improve water and ecosystem quality by reducing storm water runoff at the source, but when properly designed, may also benefit these expanded goals. With the increasing use of GI in urban contexts, there is an emerging need to facilitate participatory design and scenario evaluation to enable better communication between GI designers and groups impacted by these designs. Major barriers to this type of public participation is the complexity of both parameterizing, operating, visualizing and interpreting results of complex ecohydrological models at various watershed scales that are sufficient to address diverse ecosystem service goals. This paper demonstrates a set of workflows to facilitate rapid and repeatable creation of GI landscape designs which are incorporated into complex models using web applications and services. For this project, we use the RHESSys (Regional Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System) ecohydrologic model to evaluate participatory GI landscape designs generated by stakeholders and decision makers, but note that the workflow could be adapted to a set of other watershed models.

Relating shape to human aesthetic evaluations of harvest blocks from an aerial perspective

ABSTRACTForest planners employ various techniques to mitigate the visible effects of harvesting, including by manipulating the shape of harvest blocks. Shape is a common indicator of preference in aesthetic evaluations of landscape and harvest block design. However, the majority of perception-based research in the field of landscape aesthetics has focused on the perspective view. This study investigates the perceptual effects of two shape characteristics: complexity and image mode, as viewed from the air. Order and subjects’ area of study were also tested. Forty-five aerial images of harvest blocks and 45 digitally-manipulated harvest block shapes were used as the harvest and shape image sets, respectively. Seventy-five subjects rated each image for preference. Complexity was the strongest predictor of preference. Preference increased as complexity level increased, regardless of the image mode in which the shapes were presented. Subjects with an environmental focus in their area of study demonstrated a more prominent complexity effect than those from non-environmental fields. Both image mode and area of study had small but significant effects on preference ratings. These results confirm previous findings pertaining to complexity in psychology and landscape aesthetics, in which complexity, as a characteristic of shape, plays a role in predicting preference.

Mapping cultural ecosystem services 2.0 – Potential and shortcomings from unlabeled crowd sourced images

The volume of accessible geotagged crowdsourced photos has increased. Such data include spatial, temporal, and thematic information on recreation and outdoor activities, thus can be used to quantify the demand for cultural ecosystem services (CES). So far photo content has been analyzed based on user-labeled tags or the manual labeling of photos. Both approaches are challenged with respect to consistency and cost-efficiency, especially for large-scale studies with an enormous volume of photos. In this study, we aim at developing a new method to analyze the content of large volumes of photos and to derive indicators of socio-cultural usage of landscapes. The method uses machine-learning and network analysis to identify clusters of photo content that can be used as an indicator of cultural services provided by landscapes. The approach was applied in the Mulde river basin in Saxony, Germany. All public Flickr photos (n = 12,635) belonging to the basin were tagged by deep convolutional neural networks through a cloud computing platform, Clarifai. The machine-predicted tags were analyzed by a network analysis that leads to nine hierarchical clusters. Those clusters were used to distinguish between photos related to CES (65%) and not related to CES (35%). Among the nine clusters, two clusters were related to CES: ‘landscape aesthetics’ and ‘existence’. This step allowed mapping of different aspects of CES and separation of non-relevant photos from further analysis. We further analyzed the impact of protected areas on the spatial pattern of CES and not-related CES photos. The presence of protected areas had a significant positive impact on the areas with both ‘landscape aesthetics’ and ‘existence’ photos: the total number of days in each mapping unit where at least one photo was taken by a user (‘photo-user-day’) increased with the share of protected areas around the location. The presented approach has shown its potential for reliable mapping of socio-cultural uses of landscapes. It is expected to scale well with large numbers of photos and to be easily transferable to different regions.

Using conjoint analysis to gain deeper insights into aesthetic landscape preferences

Enjoyable landscapes are important resources for recreational activities and the socio-economic development of tourism destinations. A profound understanding of landscape preferences can support landscape management and planning. Despite the increasing integration of the socio-cultural perspective in landscape preferences research, little is known about the links between landscape characteristics and individual landscape preferences. In this study, we aimed to estimate landscape preferences at the individual level based on a set of landscape indicators, allowing us to measure the preferences of each person. We thereby evaluated the suitability of conjoint analysis to identify the relative importance of selected landscape indicators and the corresponding part-worth utilities of their characteristics. We further examined whether the preferences are homogeneous or if we can identify groups with largely different preferences. We related the picture ratings from a photo-based survey of landscapes in the Central Alps to a set of 11 landscape indicators, measuring the landscape pattern and features of each picture. Each indicator was divided into two or three levels and used to calculate importance scores and part-worth utilities by hierarchical Bayes analysis for individuals. In our study area, 11 indicators were sufficient to predict the individual choice between two landscapes for ∼90% of the respondents. Our results indicate non-linear relationships between some landscape indicators and landscape preferences and revealed considerable heterogeneity for the vectors of part-worth utilities, suggesting some methodological problems when applying aggregated linear prediction models. Our findings may therefore enhance predictive models and support landscape planning and management, but further research is necessary to understand the driving forces behind the observed differences.

Integrating the aesthetic value of landscapes and biological diversity.

As a cultural ecosystem service, the aesthetic value of landscapes contributes to human well-being, but studies linking biodiversity and ecosystem services generally do not account for this particular service. Therefore, congruence between the aesthetic perception of landscapes, ecological value and biodiversity remains poorly understood. Here, we describe the conceptual background, current methodologies and future challenges of assessing landscape aesthetics and its relationship with biodiversity. We highlight the methodological gaps between the assessment of landscape aesthetics, ecological diversity and functioning. We discuss the challenges associated with connecting landscape aesthetics with ecological value, and the scaling issues in the assessment of human aesthetics perception. To better integrate aesthetic value and ecological components of biodiversity, we propose to combine the study of aesthetics and the understanding of ecological function at both the species and landscape levels. Given the urgent need to engage society in conservation efforts, this approach, based on the combination of the aesthetic experience and the recognition of ecological functioning by the general public, will help change our culture of nature and promote ecologically oriented conservation policies.

Effects of various irrigation regimes on water use efficiency and visual quality of some ornamental herbaceous plants in the field

Efficient use of water by selection of appropriate plant species is becoming increasingly important in semi-arid and arid regions to save scarce water resources. In this study, the effects of water deficit irrigation on physiological responses, water-use efficiency (WUE) and visual quality of four herbaceous ornamental species (Malva sylvestris, Althea rosea, Callistephus chinensis and Rudbeckia hirta) were investigated. The experiment was a split-plot treatment based on a randomized complete block design experiment with four irrigation levels (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% reference evapotranspiration (ET0)) and four replications. Althaea rosea and Rudbeckia hirta showed dehydration avoidance by modifying their leaf shape, decreasing stomatal conductance and increasing Water Use Efficiency (WUEi). The lowest specific leaf area and highest root/shoot ratio were seen in Althaea rosea at 25% and 50% ET0, respectively. Malva sylvestris used a drought escape strategy by early flowering. In terms of landscape aesthetic values, Malva sylvestris performed well with a minimum of 75% ET0. Althaea rosea and Rudbeckia hirta were well-maintained with 25%–50 % ET0 irrigation levels. However, for an acceptable aesthetic landscape appearance, the minimum level of irrigation for Callistephus chinensis was 50% ET0. These results suggest that use of drought-tolerant spices such as Althaea rosea and Rudbeckia hirta can improve irrigation management and conserve aesthetic performance in urban landscapes.

The Usage and Perception of Pedestrian and Cycling Streets on Residents’ Well-being in Kalamaria, Greece

Pedestrian zones are public spaces intended for the continued and safe mobility of pedestrians and people with disabilities, and they provide multiple benefits to urban areas. They counterbalance the densely built-up areas, decrease atmospheric pollution, increase available green or social space, increase walking and cycling rates, and facilitate active play for children. Done properly, pedestrianization may also increase local business sales. Greece boasts open public spaces and the pedestrianization of common roads. The economic crisis that Greece has been experiencing since 2008 has led people to give up their vehicles and use the pedestrian streets more frequently. The purpose of this paper was to investigate residents’ perceptions and satisfaction rates concerning the pedestrian streets of Kalamaria, Greece, and evaluate their importance for residents’ well-being. Following a random sampling method, 400 residents were interviewed. A two-step cluster analysis was conducted. The survey showed that the urban residents visited pedestrian zones in Kalamaria at least once a week, and the visits lasted 46–60 min. The improvement of urban landscape aesthetics and people’s health and well-being were evaluated as important functions of pedestrian zones. The results also indicate that residents were not satisfied with their quality of life and the existing green infrastructures of the pedestrian streets, even though they have a positive disposition toward the construction or transformation of pedestrian streets. The residents expressed their unwillingness to pay more public taxes for the construction and maintenance of pedestrian and cycling streets. The safety and convenience of the mobility of residents were the most important advantages of the pedestrian streets. Meanwhile, overspill parking and difficulties with finding parking spaces were the main disadvantages for the residents. Local authorities can use the results of the present survey to manage the city’s green infrastructure and use this information in the urban planning framework.

Mapping the intangible: Using geolocated social media data to examine landscape aesthetics

The ecosystem services concept is increasingly gaining momentum in land-use policies and landscape planning. Yet, cultural ecosystem services often lack proper assessments. With this study, we use novel methodological approaches to map the cultural ecosystem service landscape aesthetics for its enhanced consideration in land-use policies. Our study uses expert-based participatory mapping and crowd-sourced (social media) photo data to examine the spatial distribution of landscape aesthetics in the Province of Barcelona, Catalonia. We distinguish the capacity and flow of landscape aesthetics. Landscape aesthetics capacity was assessed through spatial multi-criteria evaluation, consisting of a viewshed analysis and an expert-based selection and weighting of landscape features. Landscape aesthetics flow, i.e., people’s actual appreciation of landscape aesthetics, was assessed by analysing a sample of 13,460 geolocated photographs from the social media platform Flickr. Our results uncover a substantial mismatch between landscape aesthetics capacity and flow. While landscape aesthetics capacity is widely distributed across the case study area, landscape aesthetics flow is (with few exceptions) mostly concentrated in urban and periurban areas. The main insights for land-use policies derived from our results are twofold. On one hand, landscape aesthetics flow seems less dependent on ‘pristine nature’ than experts and planners assume, while the complex integration of green and grey landscape features plays a critical role. On the other hand, urban and periurban landscapes as key landscape aesthetics providers should receive additional attention in land-use policies.

Urban parks and urban problems: An historical perspective on green space development as a cultural fix

Why does everyone think cities can save the planet? Contemporary planning interventions promise salvation via spatial fixes that might reduce carbon emissions, boost metropolitan economies, and allow urban society to thrive in spite of rising seas and climate disasters. New wetlands, floodgates, and other adaptive infrastructures allow water to coexist with urban space; new parks, such as New York’s High Line and Chicago’s 606, celebrate the interweaving of built and natural environments and suggest how outmoded infrastructure can be repurposed for civic benefit. While the climate dilemmas at hand are historically new, the use of landscaped environments in the service of solving social problems is not. Dating to the first generation of urban park development in the 19th century, planners have deployed green spaces as solutions to various cultural, political, and economic conundrums of the city. Offering an historical parallel and counterweight to investigations of contemporary urban–environmental dynamics, this paper investigates the period of park development that occurred in the 19th century in North America and Europe, using Chicago’s Olmsted-designed South Park (the contemporary Washington and Jackson Parks) as a case study. I argue that green spaces’ distinct nexus of (1) normative cultural meanings around nature, (2) power relations bound up in dominant landscape aesthetics, and (3) direct link to the economic realm via the structuring of land values have made green space development a powerful ‘cultural fix’: a means of using social space to mitigate perceived social crises. Understanding the historical foundations of green spaces’ use as cultural fixes can inform contemporary analyses, particularly as new landscape ideologies emerge as part of broader green urbanism development and climate change adaptation strategies.

The potential for integrated landscape management to fulfil Europe’s commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals

The aim of this perspective essay is to discuss how integrated landscape management (ILM) can contribute to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda in Europe. Challenges for sustainable development become evident in the emergence of land-use conflicts. Facing multiple, and in sometimes conflicting, land-use objectives and policies, we elaborate on the potential of ILM to support multifunctionality and integration across sectors and scales. Based on three recent land-use conflict cases from distinct European contexts, we empirically identify and discuss key characteristics of ILM for land-use conflict resolution as a means for SDG implementation. These conflicts are (1) agricultural production versus nature conservation, (2) urban sprawl and rural land abandonment versus landscape integrity, and (3) renewable energy generation versus landscape aesthetics. In our cases we find common concerns of decreasing landscape quality as a basis for actors to engage in collective action, the need for multi-actor/multi-sector collaboration, and the assignment of clear rights and responsibilities for land management. In contrast, issues of capacity building, transparency in decision-making and flexibility for adaptations are found lacking. Finally, we discuss ways how ILM can improve policy and practice to handle ambiguous interests and goals, and highlight the future role of landscape research in supporting SDG implementation at the landscape level in Europe.

Construction of Residential Landscape Environment Evaluation System for Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment

In the face of aging population, the residential landscape environment must meet the needs of the senior citizen. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is one of the common diseases for the elderly population. The landscape environment, as a natural resource for medical assistance and rehabilitation, needs the adaption in favor of the elderly with MCI. In this paper, the indicator is selected from the three aspects of rehabilitation, safety and ecological environment, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to establish an evaluation system composed of the target, the criterion and the indicator. With the application of Yaahp software, the weights of indicators are ranked based on the evaluation of 10 evaluators from different fields. The results show that the indicators such as dynamic space, vegetation coverage, landscape naturalness, landscape aesthetics, static space, identifiability, rehabilitation facilities and accessibility have relatively higher weights and should be prioritized in the construction of residential landscape environment. Meanwhile, other indicators should also be taken into consideration so as to make the residential landscape more perfect.