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THE USE OF LANDSCAPE SCIENCE FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF ENVIROMENTAL SECURITY
Citation:
KEPNER, W. G. AND F. MUELLER. THE USE OF LANDSCAPE SCIENCE FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF ENVIROMENTAL SECURITY. Chapter 12, I. Petrosillo, F. Muller, K. B. Jones, G. Zurlini, K. Krauze, S. Victorov, B.-L. Li, and W. G. Kepner (ed.), Use of Landscape Sciences for the Assessment of Environmental Security. Springer Netherlands, , Netherlands, , 237-261, (2007).
Impact/Purpose:
The primary objectives of this research are to:
- Provide information on the variability in water supply that can be expected under varying climatic conditions. Early efforts will be focused on assembling regional databases for at least two counties (Mecklenberg County and York County) within SEQL region that can be used for water supply generation and model development.
- Develop tools that will help improve our ability to evaluate, study, and model linkages between different types of environmental systems: hydrologic, geomorphic, ecological, and climatic.
- Explore the use of annual and seasonal measurements of large lake surface temperatures as a new ecological indicator of the overall thermal content of those lakes, and construct an estimator of seasonal large lake heat budgets.
Description:
The assessment of land use and land cover is an extremely important activity for contemporary land management. Human land-use practices (including type, magnitude, and distribution) are the most important factors influencing
environmental management at local, regional, national, and global scales. In the past, environmental policies have often reflected a reactive response to environmental perturbations with management efforts focused on short-term, local scale problems such as pollutant abatement. Currently, environmental management philosophy is evolving toward examination of critical environmental problems over
larger spatial scales and assessment of the cumulative risk resulting from multiple problem sources. Today's environmental managers, urban planners, and decision
makers are increasingly expected to examine environmental and economic problems in a larger geographic context that crosses national boundaries and scientific disciplines.
