Creating Resilient Landscapes in an Era of Climate Change : Global Case Studies and Real-world Solutions

This book delivers a realistic and feasible framework for creating resilient landscapes in an era of anthropogenic climate change.

From across six continents, this book presents fifteen case studies of differing sociocultural, economic, and biophysical backgrounds that showcase opportunities and limitations for creating resilient landscapes throughout the world. The potential to create socio-ecological resilience is examined across a wide range of landscapes, including agricultural, island, forest, coastal, and urban landscapes, across sixteen countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Samoa, South Africa, the United States, Turkey, Uruguay, and Vanuatu. Chapters discuss current and future issues around creating a sustainable food system, conserving biodiversity, and climate change adaptation and resilience, with green infrastructure, nature-based architecture, green-tech, and ecosystem services as just a few of the approaches discussed. The book emphasizes solution-oriented approaches for an "ecological hope" that can support landscape resiliency in this chaotic era, and the chapters consider the importance of envisioning an unpredictable future with numerous uncertainties. In this context, the key focus is on how we all can tackle the intertwined impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and large-scale land-cover conversion in urban and non-urban landscapes, with particular attention to the concept of landscape resiliency. The volume provides that much-needed link between theory and practice to deliver forward-thinking, practical solutions.

This book will be of great interest to students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers who are interested in the complex relationship between landscapes, climate change, biodiversity loss, and land-based conversion at local, national and global scales.

Amin Rastandeh is a landscape analyst, with experience in the United States, New Zealand, and Iran, working on human-environmental interactions and climate change in evolving multifunctional landscapes. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sustainability and Environment at the University of South Dakota, United States. He specializes in multi-scale design and management of landscapes for safeguarding biodiversity and human communities in the face of climate change.

Meghann Jarchow is chair and associate professor in the Department of Sustainability and Environment at the University of South Dakota, United States. Her expertise includes taking a place-based approach to working toward greater sustainability including serving as chair of Greening Vermillion, president of Spirit Mound Historic Prairie, and board Member of EcoSun Prairie Farms.