Een belangrijke opgave voor de ruimtelijke planning is en balans te vinden tussen de toegenomen druk op de open groene ruimte door verstedelijking en economische ontwikkeling enerzijds, en de noodzaak van het behouden van deze landelijke gebieden voor natuur, recreatie, landschap en voedselproductie anderzijds. Dit complexe vraagstuk kan niet worden opgelost met behulp van lokale participatieve planning alleen. De afgelopen decennia is een groeiend aantal computersystemen ontwikkeld ter ondersteuning, het zogenaamde Planning Support System (PSS).

Geographical information systems can offer insights into the possibilities for emergency response and the possibilities for self help during a disaster, such as a flooding or explosions. Based on this information, proposed housing areas can be adapted. The building site can be elevated or ‘safe havens’ for shelter can be created. Nevertheless, such information was hardly taken into consideration in local spatial planning practices, especially with respect to flood risks. Local governments did not feel themselves responsible for the reduction of potential flood consequences.

Given its vast land resources and favorable water supply, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC’s) natural agricultural potential is immense. However, the economic potential of the sector is handicapped by one of the most dilapidated transport systems in the developing world (World Bank 2006). Road investments are therefore a high priority in the government’s investment plans and those of its major donors.

Desarrollo Rural y TIC
Mariana Fossetti*

The year of 2008 marked the beginning of a new phase at ICARDA: the full implementation of the Center's Strategic Plan 2007-2016, and a renewed commitment to addressing the global challenges of food security, poverty alleviation and climate change in the dry areas. It was also a year of adversity, both locally and globally. At ICARDA's main research station in Syria, the 2007/2008 cropping season experienced drought combined with wide variations in temperature, falling to -12°C in winter and rising to 37°C in the early spring.

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the changes in the fragmentation and ecological stability of the floodplain forest geobiocoenoses in the Protected Landscape Area Litovelske Pomoravi, Czech Republic. Using GIS methods, it was determined that the fragmentation within the study area had increased slightly and the ecological stability of the landscape had decreased slightly between the years 1938 and 2006, although the latter remained on a fairly high level.

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 effective use of natural resources is one of the important issues of today. GIS is recently used as an effective tool for solution of complicated problems. Land use researches in landscape planning studies can be done reliably and practically by the use of GIS. Depending on the increase of demands on coastal zones, the determination of land uses and conservation of them gets more important today. Within this context, in this study, the past and the present land uses of Tekirdağ coastal zone is pointed out.

The relief of an area has significant ecological impacts on the climate, vegetation and soil properties of the same area. Relief can show variances depending on steepness, altitudes or roughness of the land surfaces in a landscape are sloppy, low or high; or; rough or smooth. In the scope of this approach, elevation, slope gradients and aspects as landscape relief characteristics in the borders of Ardahan city were evaluated for tourism and recreation use. In order o determine the relief characteristics of the landscape, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) were utilized.