Demographic change suggests substantial effects on future societal demands on agricultural landscape use and thus on rural areas. Demographic change is thereby defined as both the decrease of the population and the shift in the age distribution („aging“) and in the spatial distribution („rural flight“ particularly of young people).

New broader, adaptable and accommodating sets of themes have been proposed to help to identify, understand and solve sustainability problems. However, how this knowledge will foster decisions that lead to more desirable outcomes and analyses necessary to transition to sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. We argue that we are still underestimating the tendency to lock into certain patterns that come at the cost of the ability to adjust to new situations.

The Rhodes trout fishery, located in the North Eastern Cape, is one of South Africa’s premier fly-fishing destinations. The integrity of the fishery is, however, under threat due to various land-use practices, which could weaken its appeal as a tourist attraction. The aim of this study is to estimate the amount recreational users are willing to pay for a project to improve the trout habitat of waters managed by the Wild Trout Association (WTA) in this fishery in order to improve its fish population density by 100 per cent.

Understanding and measuring functional connectivity for animals with habitats that have been fragmented by human
activity requires that the biology and movement of the species be considered. We used least cost paths in GIS
to test hypotheses regarding how different species of longhorned beetles likely connect habitats with dispersal.
We predicted that there would be differences in the functional connectivity of landscapes depending on species
larval niche breadth, adult feeding habits, and the potential for use of non-forest habitats. For the species with very

The field for application of biomass is rising. The demand for food and feeding stuff rises while at the same time energy, chemicals and other materials also need to be produced from biomass because of decreasing fossil resources. However, the biorefinery ideas and concepts can help to use the limited renewable raw materials more efficiently than today. With biorefineries, valuable products, such as platform chemicals, can be produced from agricultural feedstock, which can subsequently be further processed into a variety of substances by the chemical industry.

Population growth and rapid urbanization growth in recent decades have not only led to unbalanced physical expansion of cities, but also contributed to growth and development of cities. The city of Sari in Iran, like many other cities is not immune from these changes. The city population has increased by 16 times over the last fifty years. Therefore, the increasing population growth has created uncontrolled physical expansion in the city.

Background: To address the structural food deficit and top down extension system that persisted for decades, the government of Ethiopia has introduced a new extension system, called Participatory Demonstration and Training Extension Systems, which serves more than 80% of the total population. As the program was streamlined to fit the different agro-climatic condition of the country, the extension approach practiced in the Tigray region (research area) was called Integrated Household Extension Program.

With the rapid change of the social environment, Mainland China has become a new economic market due to the great domestic demand caused by its enormous population and the increasing economic growth rate. Taiwanese businesses have gradually turned to develop in China under the pressure of increasing domestic wages and land costs for expanding factories as well as the enhancement of environmental protection.

The territory of Syracuse is composed of different important natural, cultural and anthropic landscape complexes. As a whole, the territory is affected by an inhomogeneous development pattern, mostly oriented to the waterfront. A greenways land policy based on an effective land marketing pattern might reduce this gap. The study assumes an axiological approach to land planning, combining a qualitative valuation model based on a WebGIS-MAVT tool, and an interactive multicriteria tool based on and a DRSA pattern.

Background: In South Africa, the idea that the township economy needs to be ‘revitalised’ has begun to gain significant political traction. The Gauteng provincial government has responded to this challenge by setting out a strategy that promises to channel resources and create opportunities for micro-enterprises. The paper responds to development interventions such as this through interrogating the nature of the challenges facing micro-enterprises that need to be overcome in South African townships.

Topography and relief variability play a key role in ecosystem functioning and structuring. However, the most commonly used concept to relate pattern to process in landscape ecology, the so-called patch-corridor-matrix model, perceives the landscape as a planimetric surface. As a consequence, landscape metrics, used as numerical descriptors of the spatial arrangement of landscape mosaics, generally do not allow for the examination of terrain characteristics and may even produce erroneous results, especially in mountainous areas.

Climate impact scenarios for agriculture usually consider yield development, landscape water balance, nutrient dynamics or the endangerment of habitats separately. Scenario results are further limited by roughly discriminated land use types at low spatial resolution or they are restricted to single sites and isolated crops. Here, we exemplify a well data based comprehensive sensitivity analysis of a drought endangered agrarian region in Northeast Germany using a 2050 climate scenario.