The Peloponnese, a province of the Byzantine Empire in the 11th and 12th centuries, was divided into three distinct political entities after 1204: the Frankish Principality of Achaia, the Venetian colonies of Modon and Coron, and the Byzantine lands in the southeast. The number and size of cities in the Peloponnese during the 11th and 12th centuries expanded, and the establishment of the new political entities of the 13th century did not hinder the development of its urban centers. New urban centers appeared, and the dynamics of the old urban centers witnessed a major shift.

Very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery from Google Earth and Microsoft Bing Maps is increasingly being used in a variety of applications from computer sciences to arts and humanities. In the field of remote sensing, one use of this imagery is to create reference data sets through visual interpretation, e.g., to complement existing training data or to aid in the validation of land-cover products. Through new applications such as Collect Earth, this imagery is also being used for monitoring purposes in the form of statistical surveys obtained through visual interpretation.

Scholars and practitioners have great interest in topics related to spatial patterns and the organization and properties of space. Landscape urbanism is one of these topics of interest. This essay, in the form of chronological criticism, presents a broad historical overview of the rise of landscape urbanism, primarily from a landscape architectural/geographical/ecological perspective, comparing the normative theories derived in the Western traditions embedded in urban design and architecture with the general values of landscape urbanism.

Land-use change can have local-to-global environment impacts such as loss of biodiversity and climate change as well as social-economic impacts such as social inequality. Models that are built to analyze land-use change can help us understand the causes and effects of change, which can provide support and evidence to land-use planning and land-use policies to eliminate or alleviate potential negative outcomes.

The natural salt meadows of Tilopozo in the hyperarid, Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which are located at approximately 2800 m above sea level, are under pressure from industrial activity, and cultivation and grazing by local communities. In this research, the land surface covered by salt meadow vegetation was estimated from normalized difference vegetation indices (NDVI) derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) data from 1985 to 2016.

Empirical studies of farm outcomes that rely on survey data often find important roles for education and gender. However, relatively few studies consider either field of study or gender of the decision maker (as opposed to gender of the survey respondent). This paper evaluates how the field of education and gender of decision makers correlate with profitability, farm management, future intentions, risk and norms, and adoption of novel technologies in New Zealand, explicitly accounting for the fact that many farming households make decisions jointly.

Despite global recognition of the social, economic and ecological impacts of deforestation, the world is losing forests at an alarming rate. Global and regional efforts by policymakers and donors to reduce deforestation need science-driven information on where forest loss is happening, and where it may happen in the future.

Rigorous peer-review is the corner-stone of high-quality academic publishing [...]

Participatory research methods are increasingly used to collectively understand complex social-environmental problems and to design solutions through diverse and inclusive stakeholder engagement. But participatory research rarely engages stakeholders to co-develop and co-interpret models that conceptualize and quantify system dynamics for comparing scenarios of alternate action. Even fewer participatory projects have engaged people using geospatial simulations of dynamic landscape processes and spatially explicit planning scenarios.

Investigations of global warming potential (GWP) of semiarid cropping systems are needed to ascertain agriculture’s contributions to climate regulation services. This study sought to determine net GWP for three semiarid cropping systems under no-tillage management in the northern Great Plains of North America: spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)—fallow (SW-F), continuous spring wheat (CSW) and spring wheat—safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.)—rye (Secale cereale L.) (SW-S-R).

The aim of this contribution is to introduce the topic of this volume and briefly measure the evolution and applicability of central place theory in previous and contemporary archaeological practice and thought [...]

Protected areas are considered the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation, but face multiple problems in delivering this core objective. The growing trend of framing biodiversity and protected area values in terms of ecosystem services and human well-being may not always lead to biodiversity conservation. Although globalization is often spoken about in terms of its adverse effects to the environment and biodiversity, it also heralds unprecedented and previously inaccessible opportunities linked to ecosystem services.