Today we have to face new challenges about decreasing water resources, wastewater treatment, limited spaces and ecological preservation. This problem must be solved in a sustainable way using innovative water management strategies that combine technology with landscape design by enhancing ecosystem services provision. An effective way of tackling this problem is to use Constructed Treatment Wetlands (CTW) as low-cost alternative to conventional secondary or tertiary wastewater treatment. The aim of this paper is to evaluate their multifunctional role in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services’ enhancement by taking into account a case study in southern Italy. For this purpose an annual monitoring of fauna and vegetation has been carried out in order to identify species of national and international interest strongly related to the new habitats availability. Results have shown the ability of CTW in providing ancillary benefits, well beyond the primary aim of water purification, such as sustaining wildlife habitats and biodiversity at local and global scales, as well as its potential role in terms of recreational and educational opportunities.

Globally, agriculture is a dominant form of human use of land with agro-ecosystems covering about 40% of the terrestrial surface of the Earth. In this context, the European Union considers agriculture a key sector of the economy, recognizing, however, the related environmental implications. The aim of this paper is to examine the agricultural efficiency of EU countries, through a bootstrap-Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, an effective nonparametric method for evaluating the relative efficiency of the decision-making units. European datasets, suitable for policies and focused on the integration between agricultural productivity and ecosystem services (ESs) conservation, have been used to support planners and managers. Data related to five inputs (labor, land, capital, fertilizers, and irrigation area) and to one output connected to the economic value of agricultural production were collected from 1993 to 2013. The results show that the majority of EU countries have been experiencing increasing or decreasing returns to scale, highlighting their potential to increase their production efficiency by modifying their input use. Both for the output-oriented approach and the input-oriented approach, the majority of EU countries could better rationalize their input use obtaining more outputs and achieving production efficiency. DEA, a non-parametric methodology has been applied, using the concept of a reference group of efficient decision-making units that produce a similar output (peer group). Input-oriented and output- oriented DEA results and comparison indicate that most of the oldest EU countries have a more efficient and optimized crop production process in terms of resource savings and output maximization. This is probably due to the application of the Common Agricultural Policy. Therefore, in policy planning but also in management de- cisions, attention should always be paid not only to the maximization of agricultural production, but also to the environmental resource overexploitation. In this sense, best agricultural practices could represent a model to follow because they can maintain ESs without depressing production by using practices like conservation tillage, crop diversification, legume intensification and biological control perform giving the same results as intensive, high-input systems.

A vast amount of knowledge and experience on coping with climatic variability and extreme weather events exists within local communities, and indigenous coping strategies are important elements of successful adap- tation plans. Traditional knowledge can help to provide efficient, appropriate and time-tested ways of re- sponding to climate change especially in far-flung communities. However, little is known about how traditional coping strategies translate into adaptation to long-term changes, and to what degree they prevent pro-active, transformational responses to climate change. This paper assesses the use of climate related information for communities in the Himalayan foothills of rural India, and reports on the barriers to adaptation planning and actions. Surveys have been carried out to analyze the current practices and the role of information in planning for climate change adaptation in the rural areas of the Nainital region of India located in Western Himalaya. Respondents perceive the local climate change, the intensity of change, and the negative impacts on the com- munity and landscape. Decreases in water quantity and changes in precipitation patterns are among the major concerns for respondents, however, communities have begun to use traditional knowledge and historical climate information for developing strategies suitable to cope with impacts of climate change. Going forward, additional information is needed to match the high priority community needs with viable adaptation strategies. Lack of money, lack of access to information, and lack of awareness or understanding are considered the three largest hurdles besides low priority for adaptation, recognized by community members as barriers to adaptation planning and actions. Adaptation plans must be integrated into both top-down and bottom-up approaches to plan for enabling sustainable development and the efficient use of information for adaptation. Finally, tradi- tional knowledge seems to be useful not only in contrasting climate change impacts, but also in recovering several ecosystem services that work all together for enanching the quality of life of villagers at local scale.

This work carries out a landscape analysis for the last 60 years to compare the degree of preservation of two areas on the same Italian coastline characterized by different environmental protection levels: a National de- signated protected areas and a highly tourist coastal destination. The conversion of natural land-covers into human land uses were detected for protected and unprotected coastal stretches highlighting that the only es- tablishment of a protected area is not enough to stem undesirable land-use outcomes. A survey analysis was also conducted to assess attitudes of beach users and to evaluate their perception of natural habitats, beach and coastal water quality, and coastal dynamic over time. The results of 2071 questionnaires showed that there is similarity between subjective and objective data. However, several beach users perceived a bad quality of coastal water in the legally unprotected coastal area. The implications from a planning and management perspective are discussed.

The document provides a practical framework with several guidelines and best practices for making consistent, credible, and informed protected area managers to deal with diverse challenges associated with restoring the natural heritage, including ecosystem services, of protected areas. These guidelines recognize the long interrelationship between humans and the environment and focus on the need to restore the ecological, cultural and other important values of protected areas including the meaningful engagement of partners, stakeholders, communities, the general public, and visitors in this process.

The identification of areas worthy of protection and their subsequent institution as natural parks are instruments that society uses to preserve biodiversity that, by supporting Natural Capital Flow (NCF), represents a guarantee for the maintenance of human life quality. However, the implemented strategies for the conservation of biodiversity may differ from those adopted for the maintenance of natural capital; consequently, planning for natural capital might require a different strategy from that used in conservation policies. The aim of this paper is to assess the ‘conservation effect’ of different conservation policies on the maintenance of NCF in three natural parks in Apulia Region (southern Italy). The assessment of natural capital flow variation has been carried out investigating the temporal dynamics of land-use/land-cover mosaics, and using Costanza et al.'s economic coefficients as surrogates of NCF. Results showed that not all environmental conservation management strategies have played an equal role in fostering NCF. This research highlights that the recognition of the natural value of a site according to the European Directives (e.g. NATURA 2000 network) is not sufficiently effective for the conservation of the NCF, while it is necessary to identify a management authority that can appropriately drive landscape transformations, and sets, if necessary, the appropriate limitations. In addition, the management of these areas as part of a network of natural parks seems to be more effective for the maintenance of NCF.

Increasing external pressures from human activities and climate change can lead to desertification, affecting the livelihood of more than 25% of the world's population. Thus, determining proximity to transition to desertification is particularly central for arid regions before they may convert into deserts, and recent research has focused on devising early warning signals for anticipating such regime shifts. We here draw the attention to some emerging land-cover cross-scale patterns with a historical characteristic sequence of different regimes in arid or semi-arid Mediterranean regions that could indicate an impending transition to the tightening and extension of desertification processes. Inflexibility of land administration may, in turn, reinforce desertification processes, erode the resilience and promote regime shifts and collapse instead of the adaptability required to counter surprises due to climate change. Various theoretical studies have designated the increase in spatial connectivity as the leading indicator of early warning for an impending critical transition of regime shifts. We show that a potential way to address early warning signals of regime shifts to monitor and predict changes is to look at current land-cover regime within a simple framework for interpreting cross-scale spatial patterns. We provide examples of this approach for the Apulia region in southern Italy with desertification processes in place, and discuss what a cross-scale land-cover pattern could mean, what it says about the condition of socio-ecological landscapes, and what could be the effects of changing observed conditions ought to, for instance, climate change. We take advantage of the rich information provided by cross-scale pattern analysis in the pattern transition space provided by classic neutral landscape models. We show potentially dramatic shifts of connectivity at low land-cover composition below certain thresholds, and suggest that the degree to which the observed pattern departs from a particular neutral model can indicate early warning signals of regime shifts, and how those landscapes might evolve/react to additional land-cover variation. Moreover, as the land-cover pattern mostly depends on social-economic factors, we argue that we have to change societal values at the root of inflexibility.

In the context of new tools suitable for making local authorities more pro-active in terms of effectiveness in environmental management, this paper analyzes the case of the application of EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) to local authorities in Italy. EMAS is a European tool that was revised in 2009 with Regulation (EC) N. 1221/2009, named EMAS III. This paper has two goals. The first goal is to analyze how the local authorities, with an environmental management system registered under EMAS, evaluate the environmental aspects related to their activities. The second goal is to propose a set of specific indicators to be monitored, which would fulfill the EMAS III compulsory core-set of indicators. To do this all the EMAS registered public authorities in Italy have been contacted to obtain a copy of their most recent validated environmental statements. Then, for each environmental aspect considered, a matrix has been processed, reporting on related activities, environmental significance, indicators, and environmental targets to improve the performance of the EMS. The analysed environmental statements (75% response rate) deal with a high number of environmental aspects and refer to a wide range of activities carried out by the local authorities. The set of indicators demonstrates that registered local authorities have already enough information for the purpose of complying with the new EMAS III core indicators. On the contrary, EMAS III does not properly cover the several environmental issues and impacts faced by local authorities, so that a different, wider and more specific framework is needed for their environmental performance evaluation. As a result of this study, a set of 13 indicators has been proposed, based on those already in use by local authorities and on those used by the European Environment Agency for environmental assessments. Therefore, this paper can represent a first step towards the definition of sectorial reference guidelines that will be developed at the European level by the European Commission.

A significant threat to the natural and cultural heritage of Mediterranean natural protected areas (NPAs) is related to uncontrolled fires that can cause potential damages related to the loss or a reduction of ecosystems. The assessment and mapping of the vulnerability to fire can be useful to reduce landscape damages and to establish priority areas where it is necessary to plan measures to reduce the fire vulnerability. To this aim, a methodology based on an interactive computer-based system has been proposed in order to support NPA's management authority for the identification of vulnerable hotspots to fire through the selection of suitable indicators that allow discriminating different levels of sensitivity (e.g. Habitat relevance, Fragmentation, Fire behavior, Ecosystem Services, Vegetation recovery after fire) and stresses (agriculture, tourism, urbanization). In particular, a multi-criteria analysis based on Fuzzy Expert System (FES) integrated in a GIS environment has been developed in order to identify and map potential “hotspots” of fire vulnerability, where fire protection measures can be undertaken in advance. In order to test the effectiveness of this approach, this approach has been applied to the NPA of Torre Guaceto (Apulia Region, southern Italy). The most fire vulnerable areas are the patch of century-old forest characterized by high sensitivity and stress, and the wetlands and century-old olive groves due to their high sensitivity. The GIS fuzzy expert system provides evidence of its potential usefulness for the effective management of natural protected areas and can help conservation managers to plan and intervene in order to mitigate the fire vulnerability in accordance with conservation goals.

Greenhouse farming, where energy con- sumptions are mainly related to the greenhouses heating, is one of the sectors consuming the most energy in the agricultural industry. High costs and the uncertain availability of fossil fuels constrain the use of heating applications. Among possible solutions, the utilization of renewable heating systems such as geothermal energy through ground-source heat pump systems (GSHPs) at competitive prices has to be taken in consideration. The competitiveness of these systems depends mainly on the characteristics of the end-users, i.e., the annual heating loads. Few studies focusing on the potential of using these systems start with an analysis of the thermal re- quirements and end with a cost evaluation in tune with local assets, geo-climatic conditions, and landscape pro- tection. This paper analyzes the greenhouse crop indus- try in the Apulia region in southern Italy, as a potential end-user of GSHP systems. Data collected from an area mainly devoted to greenhouse crop production have been used to (a) describe greenhouse farms, (b) define the heating requirements of a greenhouse model repre- sentative of the most used typology in the investigated area, and (c) examine the economic viability of green- house heating with GSHP systems. Both vertical and horizontal ground heat exchanger (GHE) configurations are compared with conventional fossil-fuel heating sys- tems. In all scenarios considered, the observed payback periods appear reasonable and worthy of consideration. The results suggest that these technologies can fully satisfy the winter heating requirements in a cost- effective way and they can support the planning of measures aimed to improve the sector competitiveness.

Landscape sustainability can be considered in terms of order and disorder, where order implies causality, well-defined boundaries and predictable outcomes, while disorder implies uncertain causality, shifting boundaries and often-unpredictable outcomes. We address the interplay of order and disorder in social–ecological landscapes (SELs) using spatiotemporal analysis of entropy-related indices of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index time-series. These indices can provide insights for complex systems analysis for the evaluation of adaptive capacity in SELs. In particular, our overarching aim is to help interpret what an increase of order/disorder means with regards to SELs and the underlying drivers and causes of conditions in SELs. The approach can be used to increase spatially explicit anticipatory capability in environmental science and natural resource management based on how the system has responded to stress in the past. Such capability is crucial to address SEL adaptive capacity and for sustainable planning given that surprises may increase as a consequence of both climate change and multiple interacting anthropogenic stressors. These advancements should greatly contribute to the application of spatial resilience strategies in general, and to sustainable landscape planning in particular, and for the spatially explicit adaptive comanagement of ecosystem services.

Local authorities have an important role in improving the quality of life of their citizens by managing environmental and social issues for a sustainable development of the territory. While an increasing number of municipalities are implementing Environmental Management Systems (ISO14001-EMAS) to manage their environ- mental issues, standardised tools for social ones are still lacking. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for developing an Integrated Environmental and Social Management System through the inclusion of SA 8000 (Social Accountability) requirements with an innovative focus on citizens’ information and consultation and highlights the main outcomes of its application in a small Italian municipality.

Over the last decade we have seen an increased emphasis in environmental management and policies aimed at maintaining and restoring multiple ecosystem services at landscape scales. This emphasis has resulted from the recognition that management of specific environmental targets and ecosystem services requires an understanding of landscape processes and the spatial scales that maintain those targets and services. Moreover, we have become increasingly aware of the influence of broad-scale drivers such as climate change on landscape processes and the ecosystem services they support. Studies and assessments on the relative success of environmental policies and landscape designs in maintaining landscape processes and ecosystem services is mostly lacking. This likely reflects the relatively high cost of maintaining a commitment to implement and maintain monitoring programs that document responses of landscape processes and ecosystem services to different landscape policies and designs. However, we argue that there is considerable variation in natural and human-caused landscape pattern at local to continental scales and that this variation may facilitate analyses of how environmental targets and ecosystem services have responded to such patterns. Moreover, wall-to-wall spatial data on land cover and land use at national scales may permit characterization and mapping of different landscape pattern gradients. We discuss four broad and interrelated focus areas that should enhance our understanding of how landscape pattern influences ecosystem services: (1) characterizing and mapping landscape pattern gradients; (2) quantifying relationships between landscape patterns and environmental targets and ecosystem services, (3) evaluating landscape patterns with regards to multiple ecosystem services, and (4) applying adaptive management concepts to improve the effectiveness of specific landscape designs in sustaining ecosystem services. We discuss opportunities as well as challenges in each of these four areas. We believe that this agenda could lead to spatially explicit solutions in managing a range of environmental targets and ecosystem services. Spatially explicit options are critical in managing and protecting landscapes, especially given that communities and organizations are often limited in their capacity to make changes at landscape scales. The issues and potential solutions discussed in this paper expand upon the call by Nassauer and Opdam (Landscape Ecol 23:633-644, 2008) to include design as a fundamental element in landscape ecology research by evaluating natural and human-caused (planned or designed) landscape patterns and their influence on ecosystem services. It also expands upon the idea of "learning by doing" to include "learning from what has already been done.

How an apparent static and ordered landscape condition in social ecological landscapes (SELs), can be made sustainable in terms of maintenance and improvement of the provision of ecosystem services (ESs) in face of unpredictable disturbance and change? Our contribution to the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services (MAES) working group is to advance some recommendations on how to approach the dynamic analysis of complex adaptive systems to improve ecosystem resilience, habitat connectivity and the delivery of ESs. We show exemplary cases where we utilize the NDVI provided by remote sensing to evaluate land cover transformations and processes and ES provisioning. We focus on NDVI because it allows the supply of information on net primary production, i.e., the energetic foundation of nearly all ecosystems and that provides the basis of most of ESs. The use of spectral entropy, and nonlinear analysis of spatial temporal dynamics to investigate trajectory predictability of SELs provide very useful insight into the dynamics of SELs and can assist in the characterization of the links between land cover patterns with ecological processes to support more reliable assessments and accountings of ESs.

The challenge for conservation managers is to ensure the long-term sustainability of an area by preserving its ecological and cultural values against predictable and unpredictable natural and human pressures and, at the same time, ensuring the fruition of the environmental resources. This research proposes an integrated use of GIS–based Decision Support System (DSS) with a conceptual linear model of vulnerability to foster conservation strategies in protected areas, by identifying: (1) the most vulnerable areas, requiring specific protection measures to enhance the natural features, as well as the prevention of natural and human risks; (2) the most effective management interventions to reduce system vulnerability to fire. The development of such a tool has been tested on the natural protected area of Torre Guaceto, through the selection of suitable indicators that enable discrimination among different levels of sensitivity and pressures, in order to provide evidence of its potential utility for the management of protected areas and the mitigation of their vulnerabilities. The results highlight that the most vulnerable areas are represented by contiguous patches of wetlands, the load of fuel at wetlands-agricultural lands interface areas, and the small patches of century-old forests, Mediterranean maquis and coastal dunes. On the basis of the results it is desirable that future researches on vulnerability should not only consider the “of what to what”, but also consider “for who, where and when” with a focus on the spatial and temporal scale dimensions of vulnerability.

A new definition of environmental security gives equal importance to the objective and subjective assessments of environmental risk. In this framework, the management of tourist harbors has to take into account managers’ perceptions. The subject of the present study is a tourist harbor in southern Italy where six different managers are present. This paper aims to assess subjectively and objectively the environmental risks associated with the harbor, and to compare the results to provide estimates of environmental security. Hereby managers have been interviewed and a simple model is used for making preliminary assessment of environmental risks. The comparison of the results highlighted a common mismatch between risk perception and risk assessment. We demonstrated that the old part of the harbor is less secure than the new part. In addition, one specific manager representing a public authority showed a leading role in ensuring the environmental security of the whole harbor.

Environmental security, as the opposite of environmental vulnerability (fragility), is multi-layered, multi-scale and complex, existing in both the objective physical, biological, and social realm, and the subjective realm of individual human perception. In this paper, we detect and quantify the scales and spatial patterns of human land use as ecosystem disturbances at different hierarchical levels in a panarchy of social-ecological landscapes (SELs) by using a conceptual framework that characterizes multi-scale disturbance patterns exhibited on satellite imagery over a four-year time period in Apulia (South Italy). In this paper we advance the measure of the functional importance of ESPs provided by natural areas and permanent cultivations based on their effectiveness at performing the services. Any landscape element contributes to the overall proportion of disturbance in the region, through its composition of disturbed locations (pixels), and to the overall disturbance connectivity through its configuration. Such landscape elements represent, in turn, functional units for assessing functional contributions of ES providers at different scale(s) of operation of the service. We assume that such effectiveness at performing the services will result directly affected by how much disturbance surrounds ESP locations at different neighborhoods. Multi-scale measurements of the composition and spatial configuration of disturbance are the basis for evaluating vulnerability of ecosystem services through multi-scale disturbance profiles concerning land-use locations where most of ecosystem service providers reside. Vulnerability estimates are derived from the identification of scale range couplings or mismatches among land-use disturbances related to different land uses and revealed by trajectories from the global profile to local spatial patterns. Scale mismatches of disturbances in space and time determine the role of land use as a disturbance source or sink, and may govern the triggering of landscape changes affecting ecosystem service providers at the scale(s) of operation of the service. The role of natural areas and permanent cultivations (olive groves and vineyards) in providing disturbance regulation across scales in South Italy has consequences for regional SELs since it may govern if and how disturbances associated with land-use intensification (sources) will affect the functional contribution of ES providers.

Ecosystem health and integrity are here framed into the more general concept of environmental security and thus enriched by explicitly addressing objective and subjective risk to ecosystem services by human activities. Environmental security, as the opposite of environmental vulnerability (fragility), is multi-layered, multi-scale and complex, existing in both the objective physical, biological, and social realm, and the subjective realm of individual human perception. In this paper, we detect and quantify the scales and spatial patterns of human land use as ecosystem disturbances at different hierarchical levels in a panarchy of social-ecological landscapes (SELs) by using a conceptual framework that characterizes multi-scale disturbance patterns exhibited on satellite imagery over a four-year time period in Apulia (South Italy). We advance the measure of the functional importance of ecosystem service providers (ESPs) provided by natural areas and permanent cultivations based on their effectiveness at performing the services. Any landscape element contributes to the overall proportion of disturbance in the region, through its composition and configuration of disturbed locations. Such landscape elements represent, in turn, functional units for assessing functional contributions of ESPs at different scales of operation of the service. We assume that such effectiveness at performing the services will result directly affected by how much disturbance surrounds ESP locations at different neighborhoods. Multi-scale measurements of the composition and spatial configuration of disturbance are the basis for evaluating vulnerability of ecosystem services through multi-scale disturbance profiles concerning land-use locations where most of ecosystem service providers reside. Vulnerability estimates are derived from the identification of scale range couplings or mismatches among land-use disturbances related to different land uses and revealed by trajectories from the global profile to local spatial patterns. Scale mismatches of disturbances in space and time determine the role of land use as a disturbance source or sink, and may govern the triggering of landscape changes affecting ESPs at the scales of operation of the service. The role of natural areas and permanent cultivations (olive groves and vineyards) in providing disturbance regulation across scales in Apulia has consequences for regional SELs since it may govern if and how disturbances associated with land-use intensification (sources) will affect the functional contribution of ESPs.

To face the challenge of sustainable development of human settlements, an effective interdisciplinary integration has to be achieved by embodying the complexities of societies and economies into landscape ecology analyses. Such integration is getting far more complex today as landscape ecology is expanding its scope to respond to the challenges of sustainable development of human–environmental systems. In this paper we point out the recent and novel approaches applied in landscape ecology to move beyond the traditional separation of social and ecological components in social-ecological landscapes (SELs), considering SELs as a whole co-evolving and historically interdependent systems of humans-in-nature. To meet the challenges of sustainability, landscape ecology needs to strengthen its capacity to develop spatially explicit problem solving related to landscape sustainability issues. In this respect, addressing SELs represents a more pragmatic basis for envisioning how the real world works and how we would like the world to be, as SELs represent the spatially explicit integration of social-political and ecological scales in the geographical world. However, there is still the need to go beyond the traditional views embraced by landscape and urban planning where sustainability has been envisioned as a durable, stable condition that, once achieved, could persist for generations.

Ecosystems can provide output values, which are the benefits that the current state of ecosystem (i.e., ecosystem services and natural capital) provides, and insurance value, which is ecosystem resilience. The output values link to the insurance values of ecosystems, which relate closely to its resilience and self-organizing capacity and are able to maintain the provision of ecosystem services. The valuation of ecosystem resilience could be as analogous to the valuation of a portfolio of assets in a given state, where the value of the asset mix – the portfolio – depends on the covariance in the returns on the individual assets it contains. Two examples better analyze the practical implications related to these concepts. The first regards the drylands salinization in Australia useful to illustrate how the quantification of thresholds can be useful to explain the relation between management, ecosystem services, and resilience. The second concerns the widespread promotion of market-based instruments for conservation such as the so-called Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes, which are voluntary and conditional transactions over well-defined ecosystem services between at least one supplier and one user. The conclusions report some final considerations.

Information theory and entropy measures have been extensively applied in ecology in different areas like biodiversity assessment, evolution, species interactions, spatial dynamics or landscape analysis. Ecological applications of entropy measures have been primarily focused on structural and functional complexity of systems and less attention has been paid to temporal evolution and dynamics. The aim of this paper is to present “normalized spectral entropy” (Hsn), an entropy related index able to measure part of the structural complexity of an ecological time series. Hsn quantifies the degree of order and predictability derived by the series’ power spectrum. The index sensitivity to data attributes is investigated by means of time-series surrogates of known properties (i.e., time series length, power spectrum shape, and time-series values distribution). A procedure to calculate confidence intervals is outlined as a preliminary statistical tool to assess differences among values. Three examples of possible application are described using time series of meteorological variables, vegetation physiological responses and remote sensing images. Results show how Hsn is able to contribute to the ongoing debate on how to estimate spatio-temporal complexity of ecological systems, thus making a step forward in the proposed use of complexity as an ecological orientor.

Humans constantly modify their environment to better fit their needs. These changes are even more important in small Mediterranean islands, where the flow and type of ecosystem services (ES) is constrained by insularity and heavily exploited by economic activities. We evaluated the dynamics of ES from 1954 to 2007 linked to the changes of the landscape of the Vulcano Island (southern Italy) and related such transformation to the perception of the local communities. We estimated the changes in the total economic value of ES and we coupled this objective assessment with a survey among inhabitants to measure the perception of driving forces and ES. The results show that agriculture was replaced by tourism, which simultaneously has profoundly affected the landscape and brought economic benefits to local population. Despite the urban-sprawl related to tourism development there is an increase of the flow of ES over time because of the conversion of some land-cover classes into others that provide a greater amount of ES. Local communities are aware of landscape and ES dynamics, but they do not perceive tourism as a driving force, which affects the natural attractiveness and cultural identity of their island. This approach integrates a commonly accepted objective technique to assign value to ES, with a subjective assessment taking into account how local people value the flow of ES. Effective strategies for ES management and governance need to address and incorporate local population expectations so to empower local stakeholders in the achievement of higher level of quality of life.

1 Why valuating ecosystem services at multiple scales? 2 Scales of operation of the services 3 Non-linearity 4 Synergism and trade-off among services 5 Ecosystem services in social-ecological systems 6 Cross scale effects 7 Limits of reductionist approaches 8 Current approaches to ecosystem service valuation 9 Perspectives in ecosystem service valuation

This paper is a review of the most recent literature on the interaction between climate change, land-use and energy, based on the analysis of papers collected through the most relevant scientific literature databases. A total of 114 papers published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed. The aims of this review are: in general (1) to identify the different research topics that have been developed related to the interaction between climate change, land-use and energy; more specifically, (2) to analyze what are the most suitable spatial and temporal scales of investigation to focus on for actions and strategies to reduce critical issues in the field of energy and environment; (3) to identify which actions and strategies are deemed as the most appropriate to mitigate critical issues in energy and environment; and given the research gaps found in the review, (4) to propose research recommendations in the context of effective climate-energy planning. We argue that there are certain gaps and needs for a ―nested‖ environmental governance. It is necessary to understand how different environmental policies overlap and how they can be integrated in order to verify whether there are conflicting targets that may negate each other in the long term.

New broader, adaptable and accommodating sets of themes have been proposed to help to identify, understand and solve sustainability problems. However, how this knowledge will foster decisions that lead to more desirable outcomes and analyses necessary to transition to sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. We argue that we are still underestimating the tendency to lock into certain patterns that come at the cost of the ability to adjust to new situations. This rigidity limits the ability of persons, groups, and companies to respond to new problems, and can make it hard to learn new facts because we pre-select facts as important, or not, in line with our established values. Changing circumstances demand to reappraise values like in the case of Pirsig’s monkey and its rice. There is an urgent need to go beyond such local, static and short-term conceptions, where landscape sustainability has been incorrectly envisioned as a durable, stable condition that, once achieved, could persist for generations. We argue that to manage a global transition toward more environmentally efficient and, therefore, more sustainable land-use we have to reappraise societal values at the root of overregulation and rigidity.

One solution to mitigate climate change can be the production of renewable energy. In this context, the aims of this paper are: (1) the identification of local unsuitable areas for the installation of Utility-Scale Solar Energy (USSE) in a municipality in southern Italy; (2) the assessment of the effects of their installation on local natural CO2 sequestration and on avoided CO2; and (3) the evaluation of their contribution to the global climate regulation through scenario analysis. Since 2007, 82 authorizations have been obtained for the instal- lation of USSE in the municipality and 42 over 64 already completed have been installed in unsuitable areas. For what concerns the remaining USSE, two short-term scenarios are analysed in order to take into account their contribution in terms of climate regulation ser- vice. The first scenario is called Business As Usual with new planned USSE installed by 2014 also in unsuitable areas, and the second one with the new USSE installed only in suitable areas identified in this study. Surprisingly, Scenario 2 is characterized by a reduced natural capacity to sequester CO2 emissions and by a lower contribution of vegetation in providing the ecosystem service climate regulation in comparison with Scenario 1.

One of the central questions in ecology is how biological diversity relates to ecological functions. This question has become increasingly relevant as anthropogenic transformation of the earth has intensified, causing a radical modification of the distribution and abundance of species (Turner et al., 1993). In this changing context, the maintenance of the ecological services that support humanity and other life requires understanding how ecological interactions among species produce resilient ecosystems (Peterson et al., 1998).

Multifunctional landscapes are characterized by various functions and values that sustain directly or indirectly the quality of human life, through the provision of natural capital flow. Primary production (PP), representing a measure of the solar energy captured by the system and available to drive its functioning, is recognized as a fundamental supporting service. Several biophysical modification and conversion altering the primary production are due to land-use change. Natural protected areas with a sustainable management of land-use could be able to guarantee the persistence of structure and processes (primary production) fundamental for the provision of natural capital. In this context, the aims of this paper are to investigate the spatial–temporal patterns of PP variability (1986–2010) in the Natural Protected Area of “Torre Guaceto” (southern Italy), taking into account land cover change and climate conditions and looking at PP as a supporting service able to guarantee natural capital flow. In dealing with this issue, this paper aims at testing whether NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) integrated with NDII (Normalized Difference Infrared Index) can be suitable surrogates for the assessment of shifts in the spatial–temporal dynamics of PP, useful to explore possible feedbacks related to conservation management choices in supporting natural capital flow. Therefore, the assessment of the complex spatial–temporal dynamics of natural vegetation has been performed by using NDVI and NDII. The results showed that after the establishment of the Natural Protected Area of “Torre Guaceto” in 2000, there has been an increase of NDVI that could represent an increase of PP. However, since PP depends also on water content, measured by NDII, a Pearson correlation analysis between NDII and land Surface Temperature (TS) has been carried out, demonstrating that low level of PP in 2005 was not imputable to climate conditions but to the worse quality of vegetation associated to the wetland due to aging phenomenon. In conclusion, to make the conservation management more effective it is not enough to identify and quantify the major landscape transformations and the underlying causes, but rather to detect the capability of new landscape patterns, in terms of configuration and composition, to sustain ecosystem services. The analysis of conservation management based on NDVI and NDII, used as surrogate to detect the maintenance of PP, appears to be very promising in order to develop better strategies for the adaptive management of natural protected areas.

Quality of life is a multi-dimensional concept and it is essentially subjective even if we can often find objectively measurable proxies for it. High levels of quality of life are the results of the interplay of social, economic and environmental aspects that together make people satisfied with their life. People living in small islands can enhance their quality of life through appropriate programs that guarantee the conservation of natural capital, provided by ecosystems, and networks and norms that facilitate good governance and social cohesion. In this paper an integration of natural and social capital subjectively evaluated by people living in Vulcano Island (Sicily Region, Italy) is proposed as a first approximation of the perception of quality of life. This paper explores whether there are differences in such perception between permanent and seasonal residents, who live there only for tourist economic reasons. Results show that the perception of natural capital is high in both communities, while social capital and the quality of life is less perceived by seasonal respect to permanent residents. The results of this research highlight that natural capital and social capital, taken into account independently, provide only a partial vision of quality of life that is strongly dependent on the combination of both. In this respect, a list of potential subjective social–environmental indicators useful to assess the quality of life is proposed.

The period-doubling route to chaos has occupied a prominent position and it is still object of great interest among the different complex phenomena observed in nonlinear dynamical systems. The reason of such interest is that such route to chaos has been observed in many physical, chemical and ecological models when they change over from simple periodic to complex aperiodic motion. In interlinked social–ecological systems (SESs) there might be an apparent great ability to cope with change and adapt if analysed only in their social dimension. However, such an adaptation may be at the expense of changes in the capacity of ecosystems to sustain the adaptation and it could affect the quality of ecosystem goods and services since it could degrade natural renewable and non-renewable resources and generate traps and breakpoints in the whole SES eventually leading to chaotic behaviour. This paper is rooted in previous results on modelling tourism-based SESs, only recently object of theoretical investigations, focusing on the dynamics of the coexistence between mass-tourists and eco-tourists. Here we describe a finer scale analysis of time-dependent regimes in the ranges of the degradation coefficient (bifurcation parameter), for which the system can exhibit coexistence. This bifurcation parameter is determined by objective changes in the real world in the quality of ecosystem goods and services together with whether and how such changes are perceived by different tourist typologies. Varying the bifurcation parameter, the dynamical system may in fact evolve toward an aperiodical dynamical state in many ways, showing that there could be different scenarios for the transition to chaos. This paper provides a further evidence for the period-doubling route to chaos with reference to tourism-based socio-ecological models, and for a period locking behaviour, where a small variation in the bifurcation parameter can lead to alternating regular and chaotic dynamics. Moreover, for many models undergoing chaos via period-doubling, it has been showed that structural perturbations with real ecological justification, may break and reverse the expected period-doublings, hence inhibiting chaos. This feature may be of a certain relevance also in the context of adaptive management of tourism-based SESs: these period-doubling reversals might in fact be used to control chaos, since they potentially act in way to suppress possibly dangerous fluctuations.

The way in which disturbances from human land use are patterned in space across scales can have important consequences for efforts to govern human/environment with regard to, but not only, invasive spread-dispersal processes. In this context, we explore the potential of disturbance patterns along a continuum of scales as proxies for identifying the geographical regions prone to spread of invasive plant species. To this end, we build on a previous framework of cross-scale disturbance patterns, exercising the approach for the Apulia region (South Italy). We first review procedures and results introducing disturbance maps and sliding windows to measure composition (amount) and configuration (contagion) of disturbance patterns both for real and simulated landscapes from random, multifractal and hierarchical neutral models. We introduce cross-scale disturbance profiles obtained by clustering locations from real and simulated landscapes, which are used as foils for comparison to the real landscapes on the same pattern transition space. Critical percolation thresholds derived from landscape observations and theoretical works are discussed in order to identify critical scale domains. With reference to the actual land use and invasive alien flora correlates of disturbance patterns, a cross-scale “invasibility” map of the Apulia region is derived, which shows sub-regions and scale domains with different potentials for the invasive spread of undesirable species. We discuss the potential effect of contagious and non-contagious disturbances like climate change and why multifractal-like disturbance patterns might be more desirable than others to counter biological invasions in a multi-scale and multi-level context of adaptive planning, design and management of disturbance.

Method for quantifying the territorial social-ecological value comprising the steps of: defining a classification of the use of the soil; acquiring at least an aerial photographic image comprising the territorial region of interest; subdivision of the region of interest in homogeneous areas for the use of the soil; associating a qualifying-quantifying indicator defining its value in social-ecological terms to each class of the use of the soil.