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The German Chapter of the International Association of Landscape Ecology (IALE) connects landscape researchers, planners, and other interested persons to support a scientifically and planning-related sound development of human-environment relations. IALE-D supports scientific principles of landscape science and sustainable landscape management, their application in practice, as well as the communication of landscape ecological questions.
The International Association for Landscape Ecology was founded in 1982 in the Slovakian town Piestany, to promote transdisciplinary research and exchange of experience in the field of landscape ecology as a scientific basis for landscape planning and environmental management. It strives for close contact between natural and social sciences, as well as for a connection between science and practice. On this basis, theories, models, and empirical data can be combined and merged so that a better understanding of landscape and sustainable landscape management becomes possible.
The foundation of our chapter “IALE-D“ took place at May 5, 1999 in Basel (Switzerland). Like other regional chapters, IALE-D builds on the expertise of its members, their ideas, and new ways of cooperation.
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Displaying 26 - 30 of 53Swiss Tree Lines – a GIS-Based Approximation
Mountain timber lines are relevant in the context of land abandonment and climate change. For Switzerland,
GIS-compliant delimitations of the tree line and the forest line are still lacking. Recent high-resolution landcover
information offers new possibilities for GIS-based approaches. In a Swiss-wide study, an analysis based
on slope zones was combined with a moving-window analysis to assess tree and forest line altitude, using
topographic data. The tree and the forest lines were delimited at the upper altitude reached by a tree or closed
Biorefineries: Relocating Biomass Refineries to the Rural Area
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.
Recent Glacier Recession – a New Source of Postglacial Treeline and Climate History in the Swedish Scandes
Climate warming during the past century has imposed recession of glaciers and perennial snow/ice patches along the entire Swedish Scandes. On the newly exposed forefields, subfossil wood remnants are being outwashed from beneath ice and snow bodies. In Scandinavia, this kind of detrital wood is a previously unused source of postglacial vegetation and climate history. The present study reports radiocarbon dates of a set of 78 wood samples, retrieved from three main sites, high above modern treelines and stretching along the Swedish Scandes.
Landscape metrics as a tool for evaluating scenarios for flood prevention and nature conservation
Within the framework of the project „Flood Prevention and Nature Conservation in the Weisseritz area“ („HochNatur“),
a method including landscape metrics was developed and applied to assess and to compare different land
use scenarios with regard to flood prevention and nature conservation. For the analysis, two sub-catchments strongly
differing in land use within the Weisseritz catchment (Eastern Erzgebirge, Saxony, Germany) were selected. The
Geometric approaches to computing 3D-landscape metrics
The relationships between patterns and processes lie at the core of modern landscape ecology. These dependences
can be quantified by using indices related to the patch-corridor-matrix model. This model conceptualizes
landscapes as planar mosaics consisting of discrete patches. On the other hand, relief variability is a key factor for
many ecological processes, and therefore these processes can be better modeled by integrating information concerning
the third dimension of landscapes. This can be done by generating a triangle mesh which approximates