ecosystem

In Sweden, a commission has been appointed to suggest measures to make the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services known in Swedish society at all levels, national, regional and local.[read more]

Within a natural ecosystem, sustainability is reached through competition for limited resources, generally at some sacrifice to individual fitness. It is a thoughtless, apathetic process that refines resource exploitation along the way, forever improving efficiency. Growth, in functional ecosystems, is intrinsically bound to efficiency...[read more]

One of the greatest obstacles to moving ecosystem-based management (EBM) from concept to practice is the lack of a systematic approach to defining ecosystem-level decision criteria, or reference points that trigger management action. Methodology/Principal Findings To assist resource managers and policymakers in developing EBM...[read more]

Last week the BES hosted a fascinating workshop on the development of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), in conjunction with the UK Biodiversity Reseach Advisory Group (UK-BRAG). A morning of presentations and discussion were followed with lunch and an opportunity for networking, before break-out groups met to consider various...[read more]

Hotel Chin Shuai in Taiwan folds into the Pacific during Typhoon Morakot floodingLast week's Global Environment Forum, organized by the city of Incheon, South Korea, featured United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-moon. He exhorted the gathering's 1,000 global government, academic, business and civil society organization leaders that they must...[read more]

My friend and colleague Brett Milligan and I were fortunate enough to have an article published in 'Landscape Architecture China' a new journal that recently published its second issue covering Landscape Urbanism. Our article titled 'Urbanism for Expanding Cities: Designing the conjugal interface of contrasting systems' outlined the...[read more]

“A city is more than just a collection of buildings, streets, parks, and people, and the many different entities engaged in many different trades.Its a living environment of different cultures, peoples, ideas and systems that are interdependent yet all determine and shape the others identity.”Link to original post[read more]

With a growing population raising the need for food, water and energy efficiency of spatial utilization is paramount. Our cities should be denser and farmland managed with greater care. But what if we could take some of the harshest land on the planet and use it to supplement these needs at a low cost? Three firms have proposed a method...[read more]

What might the future look like if we went beyond today’s technology and really thought intelligently…as in intelligent building skins. The people over at Phillips Design have a division called Design Probes that have been researching this very topic, among others. They call their Design Probes division… “a dedicated ‘far-future’...[read more]