The Kalahari ecosystem is characterized by natural resource conflicts and land-use pressure resulting from intensification of human activities. This paper addresses three issues of concern associated with the Kalahari ecosystem resource management: (i) the major land-use/land cover shifts in the Kalahari ecosystem since 1970 and the resulting pattern in vegetation species composition, cover and density; (ii) the possible explanations for the observed shifts; and (iii) the possible resource conflicts likely to arise.

The geological environment has been heavily polluted by chemical substances over the past few decades. Pollution sources located on the earth’s surface or underground have affected the quality of the environment. A significant amount of impact could be reduced if the allocation of potential pollution sources was based on an evaluation of environmental conditions. The main objective of this study was to develop a methodology for the allocation of potential pollution sources by employing GIS and multi-criteria evaluation techniques.

This work describes a methodology for Strategic Environmental Assessment of urban areas in Latin America based on the recently approved European Planning Directive, and applies it to the Metropolitan Area of Concepción (Chile). The method is based on the Land Suitability Index (LSI), a cartographic GIS-based index originally developed for the region of Barcelona (Spain) and aimed at determining the suitability of each point in a region for urban development, considering three sub-indexes: (i) Naturalness, (ii) Ecological Connectivity and (iii) Natural Risk.

The aim of this research was to determine physical land evaluation of hazelnut areas of Ordu-Unye and its vicinity. The study area, is located between west of Ordu and south of Samsun provinces, at coordinates 4542500-4537500 km N and 342500-347500 km E (UTM), covers approximately 31.5 km2. The study area consists of various topographic features such as, hilly and rolling physiographic units commonly. Elevation varies from 200 m to 600 m above sea level. Average annual precipitation and temperature are 1162.4 mm and 14.2ºC, respectively.

This paper presents a GIS framework for multi-criteria evaluation of land suitability for the expansion or retirement of irrigated cropland at a catchment scale in Australia. This framework is based on the fuzzy linguistic ordered weighted averaging (FLOWA) approach which integrates the analytical hierarchy procedure (AHP) and quantifier-guided OWA operators in an ArcGIS 9.2 environment. The FLOWA module proved to be highly flexible and efficient in generating and visualising a wide range of different multi-criteria decision strategies.

The security district of Hatay, Kilis, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Mardin and Sirnak province located along southern boundary lies between Turkey and Syria that comprised wide areas. It is considered to evaluate of cleaned mined land with a 300-400 m width and 510 m length. It was estimated that these lands were very productive and that can be used for organic or other types of agriculture .If these lands are cleaned and opened to agriculture, that can create jop opportunities to many families in agriculture.

Minimizing the ecological impact of land development is a fundamental principle of sustainable development. Ecological suitability assessment is the key to realizing sustainability and is also significant for optimizing spatial patterns of territorial development. Especially in mountainous areas where the ecosystem is both vulnerable and important, quantitative evaluation of ecological suitability for land development is particularly important and urgent given current development strategy of urban construction in mountainous areas in China.

Due to constant decrease in farmlands, it is important to identify the best lands useful for sustainable agriculture (productive and profitable agriculture that protects the environment and that is socially equitable). This requirement has resulted in the development of land suitability maps for agriculture by combining several factors of various natures and of differing importance.

An operational Digital Soil Assessment was developed to inform land suitability modelling in newly commissioned irrigation schemes in Tasmania, Australia. The Land Suitability model uses various soil parameters, along with other climate and terrain surfaces, to identify suitable areas for various agricultural enterprises for a combined 70000-ha pilot project area in the Meander and Midlands Regions of Tasmania. An integral consideration for irrigable suitability is soil drainage.

In our research we investigated the optimal utilization of land resources for agricultural production in Tabriz County, Iran. A GIS-based Multi Criteria Decision Making land suitability analysis was performed. Hereby, several suitability factors including soils, climatic conditions, and water availability were evaluated, based on expert knowledge from stakeholders at various levels. An Analytical Hierarchical Process was used to rank the various suitability factors and the resulting weights were used to construct the suitability map layers.

It is very important to provide reference basis for winter wheat quality regionalization of cultivation area. The aim of this article was based on factors affecting wheat quality and setting realistic spatial models in each part of the land for assessment of land suitability potentials in Beijing, China. The study employed artificial neural network (ANN) analysis to select factors and evaluate the relative importance of selected environment factors on wheat grain quality.

The paper presents the spatial distribution of ecological suitability for grape growing in Bucium vineyard (Romania), viticultural area with ecological characteristics representative for northern vineyards. The study is based on a complex methodology implying use of remote sensing, Geographical Information Systhems (GIS), climatic data, topographic and pedologic maps. Research reveal the low ecological potential of Bucium area, specialized, traditionally, in white table wines, sparkling wines and white quality wines.