European Union defined strategies for surface water quality with the 2000/60/EC, or Water Framework Directive (WFD), in order to safeguard Union's water environment; therefore policies have been implemented and became part of Member States legislations. WFD sets guidelines regarding control of river water quality as well as land use planning. However, there is a real requirement of practical investigating procedures, as well as water quality management tools, to help professionals to properly assess the water quality status.

Erosion and flooding are geohazards that pose a significant problem in eastern Québec, as they do throughout the world. To manage such risks, zoning to set limits on new construction projects is generally the first adaptation solution introduced in an area. However, very few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of zoning in terms of risk reduction. Offered here is a retrospective approach to evaluate the evolution of settlement in coastal areas before and during the progressive implementation of zoning laws and regulations in the Percé region of eastern Québec, Canada.

To better understand the greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of land use planning decisions, regional planning organizations have developed tools to forecast the emissions from project-level residential and commercial development. This paper reviews the state of GHG emissions forecasting methods for project-level development. We argue that when forecasting changes in regional emissions it is important to make explicit what is assumed about a project′s effect on the population of residents and businesses in the region.

A new regionalism has been much documented and researched for metropolitan areas; this article documents that there is a new rural regionalism as well. In the United States, these groups appear most likely to emerge in areas that are challenged by outcomes characterizing globalization's effects on the rural condition: namely, exurban or metropolitan sprawl and the resulting landscape fragmentation, often in combination with extreme pressure on the profitability of small farms or other resource uses.

Gediz Delta is place of empties itself into the sea of Gediz River. Its one of the important wetland of Turkey which under the protection of Ramsar Convention. It has lots of lagoones, salt marshes, freshwater marshes, large saltpans and also ornitotourism place Kuş Cenneti. Gediz Delta has rich flora and fauna biodiversity because of this its important place for natural life sustainability.

Although intensive managed plantations clearly increase the growth and yield of forests several papers refer to declining forest productivity. Therefore in this paper we study the impact of declining forest productivity on the land expectation value and the optimal rotation length. We start from the research by Lu and Chang (1996) and try to fill the gap between the stable site productivity (“best”) and the site mining (“worst”) cases. For that we extend the classical Faustmann model by availability of different recovering technologies.

This survey concerns the urban coastal environment of Glyfada. Due to its wonderful natural resources, the area has been chosen for residence, business, tourism as well as recreation and entertainment. However, these natural resources are threatened by degradation due to an increasing intensity of land uses and various policies that have been implemented. The survey focuses on the problems this area faces and the possibilities to maintain or increase the quality of natural resources.

Groundwater is widely recognized as the most significant water resource for irrigation and drinking purposes in the extremely-arid inland river region. However, land use is a major force altering the hydrological processes over a range of temporal and spatial scales. Therefore, understanding the interaction between land use and groundwater processes will definitely contribute to formulate a regional sustainable development strategy and recognize the impact of land use on the groundwater flow regime in the Tailan River basin.

Eco-environmental vulnerability assessment is crucial for environmental and resource management. However, evaluation of eco-environmental vulnerability over large areas is a difficult and complex process because it is affected by many variables including hydro-meteorology, topography, land resources, and human activities. The Thua Thien – Hue Province and its largest river system, the Perfume River, are vital to the social-economic development of the north central coastal region of Vietnam, but there is no zoning system for environmental protection in this region.

Today, natural and cultural reserves are being rapidly lost; however, no efficient protection approaches are being put forward. Existent reserves face with the danger of extinction as the result of the land-misuses and excessive utilisation. In order to make accurate and effective reserve management and planning decisions, optimal land-uses targeting the preservation ecological structure should be determined elaborately.

The article presents a comparison of EAFRD support for afforestation of agricultural land (managed succession) in the years of 2007–2013 and model costs required to compensate for both operational inputs and agricultural income forgone when establishing woodland on agricultural land in the Czech Republic. The aim was to investigate whether the blanket support rates for the afforestation of agricultural land are sufficient to cover the associated costs in a wide range of site conditions. Costs were calculated for 43 groups based on forest typology.