LANDSCAPE ECOLOGICAL PLANNING AND DESIGN

The course LANDSCAPE ECOLOGICAL PLANNING AND DESIGN pertains to the disciplinary groups of biological and ecological sciences of the Master's Degree in Environmental Sciences which aims at providing students with a high qualification and specialisation in specific professional fields. In particular, the course Landscape Planning and Management belongs to the Evaluation and Management of Environmental Systems curriculum that is intended to equip students to deal with problems such as the evaluation of environmental resources, management and planning of terrestrial and coastal-marine ecosystems, and planning of recovery actions and environmental renovation, also taking into account problems concerning the global change, through an ecosystem approach. Within this framework, the course aims at developing the capacity to analyse and interpret landscape patterns and processes and their dynamics using an ecological approach and shaped around the necessity to integrate ecological sustainability into landscape planning and management.

Knowledge: assimilation of principles and methods of landscape ecology; knowledge of plant community ecology; capacity to categorize and evaluate landscape; capacity to understand landscape patterns and processes; understanding of the main drivers of landscape change and dynamics
Skills: capacity to analyze the landscape using an ecological approach; capacity to interpret landscape changes; capacity to organize and use ecological data for the landscape planning and management; developing expertise on GIS and mapping
Competence: to be able to understand, evaluate and discuss experimental analyses; to be able to plan a long-term sustainable use of natural resources

For a better understanding of some parts, students should have attended the courses Assessment and Management of Environmental Sustainability and Geographic Information Systems

Basics of landscape ecology. The landscape concept. Principles and aims of landscape ecology. Fragmentation theory. The concept and the role of spatial and temporal scales. Landscape patterns. The ‘patch-corridor-matrix’ model. Plant communities analysis. Plant communities as the one component of ecosystems. Plant community ecology: community structure, community assembly rules, species diversity. Vegetation data collection and elaboration. Succession and community dynamics: synchronic and diachronic analysis. Landscape planning and management: Ecological Networks, Green Infrastructure, Nature based solutions. Ecological theories in support of landscape planning and management: Island biogeography theory, niche theory, succession theory, metapopulation theory, metacommunity theory. Landscape services vs. ecosystem services. Criteria, methods and indicators for landscape evaluation.

Lessons notes and ppts (provided in the Moodle platform).
Up-to-date scientific papers on the main topics

To verify knowledge, Skills and Competences, students will be asked to choose among different opportunities 1) a standard oral exam on Landscape Ecology principles and methods; 2) a meta-analysis regarding a topic discussed during the course; 3) present and discuss a case study of their own choosing, where applying Landscape Ecology principles and methods.
The ability to develop a GIS project and to discuss Principles and Methods of Landscape Ecology, particularly their application to landscape planning, will be evaluated.

To help students accomplish the learning goals, the course involves frontal lectures during which the topics are discussed using teaching modules (ppt slides), complemented by images, schemes and diagrams which help students visualize the concepts. Some arguments will also be examined in depth by analyzing papers on interesting case studies. Some lessons will be devoted to working groups to discuss the application of principles and methods of the landscape ecology to management and planning of man-made (agro-ecosystems, urban systems) and natural systems. Frontal lectures are integrated by 12 h of field trips to experimentally learn methods for the categorization of the landscape.

Italian

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