2022

Constance Brouillet, a PhD Student at PLUS and member of the FCL Tana project, has just returned from Antananarivo (capital of Madagascar) after a successful survey campaign lasting almost two months. In this article, she outlines her experience.

According to Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, agricultural land in Switzerland is under pressure. The ETH landscape planner assumes that in the future only a few will be able to afford a single-family house.

Over the last decade the methods applied to modelling Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) change have become increasingly complex, especially with the mainstreaming of machine learning techniques to capture relationships from data. On the one hand this heightened complexity can allow for more realistic outputs but at the same time it can make the process of confirming the accuracy of these models more time-consuming and less transparent.

‘Mountain Resilience: A systemic literature review and paths to the future’, published today by Mountain Research and Development (MRD), provides a comprehensive overview of the scientific literature in English on resilience-related topics in mountain areas. This is the first time a review of this kind has been done specifically in relation to mountains.

For the first time since a three-year hiatus, the annual Q Conference finally returned to in-person. Between September 15th and 17th, 2022, researchers from around the world gathered in Orlando, Florida for this event, presenting their research, participating in methods workshops, and sharing their experiences in a friendly and enjoyable atmosphere.  

Every year, the Silver ETH medal is awarded to outstanding doctoral theses.

From the 6th of September 2022, Jan Streit is part of the PLUS team as a Research Assistant.  

From July 18th to 23^rd PLUS was together in Valais, sharing a chalet to focus on writing while discovering the valley.

After a long period of restrictions, we were able to spend a great evening together. We look forward to intensive exchanges in the upcoming fall semester.

The IALE 2022 European Landscape Ecology Congress was held in an online format between July 11^th and July 14^th hosting participants from all over the world. Several members of the PLUS group joined IALE 2022 and contributed in different ways to “Making the future, learning from the past” – the focus on this year’s conference.

The identification and definition of landscape types is not only essential for the transferability of landscape planning and management strategies, but also a requirement of the European Landscape Convention ratified by Switzerland. Landscape typologies are usually made by experts or with the use of so-called unsupervised clustering techniques.

The team of FCL Tana project, looking at designing a resilient city using blue-green infrastructures, met in Madagascar for an intense week to meet key stakeholders, explore in detail the case study area and coordinate future field surveys.

The land consolidation in Blauen was successful. Among other things, the use of 3D landscape visualizations for public participation already at the beginning of the process has contributed to this.

Recreational walking is beneficial for physical and mental health. The densification of cities however threatens the availability of public open space. Furthermore, crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdown processes augment even more the demand for walking space.

Manuel Sudau, Enrico Celio and Adrienne Grêt-​Regamey wrote a new article on factors influencing the acceptance of spatial planning instruments.  

Predominant arguments for urban development are socio-economic, while ecologists warn from impacts on biodiversity. Is there an urban planning solution that can achieve both spatial planning objectives?