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This study investigates the engagement of communities with little or no GIS expertise in the use of publicly available spatial data for self-education in the protection of drinking water sources. A traditional administrative top-down approach to assisting communities in getting or using spatial information was replaced in the study with a bottom-up approach based on the principles of social cybernetics. The study investigated how communities used spatial datasets provided by the state to facilitate public participation in creating maps for water resource protection. Nine rural communities in the State of Idaho within the Nez Perce Indian Reservation participated in a field study from 2001–2002. Results included "map archetypes" developed by the communities and a validation of the bottom-up approach stressing community control over the process of using spatial data.

Water harvesting is a must and not an option for Jordan in the near future. The available water resources are limited and barely satisfy the current growing demands. In the basalt aquifer/NE of Jordan, there is a possibility to construct water harvesting ponds to assist the livestock owners in villages and towns in watering their livestock which will ease the pressure on the existing water resources. This research was based on the use of GIS techniques to select the optimum sites for water harvesting ponds within the basalt aquifer. Buffering, Union and arithmetic operations in GIS were all used in analysing the data based on different socio-economic and physical criteria. The outcomes of the GIS analysis resulted in selecting 72 suitable sites within the study area. These sites could be used as a guideline to the decision makers in Jordan when they decided to establish a water harvesting pond in the area. This will save time and money which could be directed to the construction of the actual water harvesting ponds.

The challenge for implementing an ecosystems approach to environmental decision-making processes, such as spatial planning, is to understand the range, nature and amount of ecosystem services currently provided and the potential for such service provision in the future. The ability to spatially represent ecosystems services is a critical element of the evidence base on which to make decisions about how physical space is used most effectively and sustainably, and the way people and activities are distributed at different spatial scales. This paper reports on the outcomes of a research project originally undertaken for the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which developed a methodology for mapping ecosystem services using GIS and readily available, existing land use/land cover datasets. Critical components of the methodology, in order to determine which datasets are appropriate for which services, are network analysis and stakeholder engagement techniques, to define the relevant typology of ecosystem services and their relationship to land use/land cover types. The methodology was developed and tested successfully in the context of green grid (green infrastructure) networks in a major UK regeneration area, the Thames Gateway, to the east of London, and its potential use in impact assessment further explored through a number of case studies.

Northern Quebec (Nunavik) presents an important intersection between population growth and climate change. The Inuit population of Nunavik has the fastest growth rate in any region of Canada. Land-use planning is an urgent and pressing need for northern communities built on permafrost, where there are considerable risks to development in areas where permafrost may thaw. As northern communities work to adapt to climate changes, they will be in great need of confident recommendations about locations of future development projects. This paper presents a case-study of the community of Tasiujaq and assesses the probability of thaw settlement of the surface, a process seriously affecting infrastructure stability. A method is developed for quantifying uncertainty in the resulting map, expressed as a function of judgmentbased uncertainty in the various factors that can influence eventual map quality. The best estimate of vulnerability and of the confidence in that estimate can be expressed in a single, simple map that allows an analyst to convey both of these vital aspects of the assessment process.

This paper reports the findings of a survey in 2009 of European practitioners who face problems related to accessing and using spatial data when preparing reports for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs). The survey was designed to be comparable to the one undertaken in 2002–03 and reported by Vanderhaegen and Muro (2005). The 2009 survey showed that problems persist and additional costs to practitioners due to data access problems were at least €150 million p.a. in Europe, providing evidence for the need for ongoing investment in the INSPIRE Directive, which aims to support spatial and environmental data-sharing for EIA/SEA studies as well as other environmental policies. The survey also indicated that although EIA and SEA reports now take less time and are, on average, cheaper to prepare, the variability of their quality is still of concern.

Across the public sector, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis are increasingly ubiquitous when making decisions involving people and places. However, historically GIS has not been prevalently applied to the various types of impact assessment. As such, this paper presents findings from a survey conducted in 2011 of 100 local authorities in England to examine how embedded GIS, spatial analysis and visualisation practices are to the process of conducting impact assessments. The results show that despite obvious advantages of applying GIS in these processes, applications employing basic techniques are at best sporadic, and where advanced methods are implemented, these in almost all instances are conducted by external contractors, thus illustrating a significant GIS under capacity within the sampled local authorities studied.

The generation and use of spatial information has significantly increased in recent years. Its importance has been magnified by the INSPIRE Directive, which has subsequently led to specific requirements within several legislative frameworks, such as the Water Framework and Noise Directives, for generating spatial data and spatially-specific outputs, as well as encouraging the creation of spatial data infrastructures at European level. The increased availability of spatial datasets resulting from these initiatives facilitates and promotes the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in planning and environmental assessment, among other sectoral applications. Arguably, the inclusion of geographic information through GIS supports and enhances environmental planning processes, enabling a rapid and objective analysis of environmental issues, and presenting information in a spatial and graphical manner. However, there are a number of considerations for the successful application of spatial data and GIS, and a number of issues remain affecting consistency and validity of results. This paper provides a critical review of current issues affecting spatial dataset management and use (such as format, scale, completeness, timeliness and metadata), and discusses common GIS methods and existing constraints to their application in Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). It concludes outlining existing opportunities to optimise the contribution of spatial data to environmental planning, and establishing future research and practice needs to enhance GIS use in SEA and EIA practice.

Landscape characteristics underpin the ability of the forestry industry to deliver in an increasingly complex operational environment. However, the range of site types within the British public forest estate includes many with soil or exposure constraints. Until recently it was not possible to effectively assess the scale of constraints and spatially allocate land appropriately to the objectives suggested by policy makers. Stand level forestry decision support systems have been developed to address these issues but it is difficult to incorporate their outputs into the spatial forest plans, limiting their operational use. The MOTIVE project (EU 7th Framework Programme) provided an opportunity to integrate stand level tools with spatial inventory data. The output is a comprehensive GIS layer containing silvicultural, geophysical and climate data, and site-specific decision support system outputs. This paper describes the climate and inventory data, models, GIS methods, the visualisation of outputs, and the impact on stakeholders.

Expansion of renewable energy development causes concerns which traditional land-use planning may have limited capacity to address adequately. The complexity and multiplicity of scales, criteria and actors involved in decision-making processes requires a holistic approach that captures the variety in stakeholder interests. Reaching consensus across interests ensures democratic and cost-effective decision-making processes. The Consensus-based Siting (ConSite) tool suite was developed for optimal siting of onshore wind-power plants and routing of high-voltage power lines considering stakeholder interests. ConSite is based on the operational steps of spatial multi-criteria decision analysis using a bottom-up holistic approach. Its spatially explicit graphical user interface allows for a high level of stakeholder involvement and includes inherent capabilities of scenario modelling. ConSite thereby helps to structure decision problems, balance conflicting interests and identify relevant decision strategies based on risk assessment and trade-off analysis. ConSite visualises the spatial consequences of implementing various decision strategies and balancing site-specific conflict levels with energy production potential.

Forest planning is a necessary requirement for long-term, economically efficient and environmentally responsible forest management and use. Iran has 12 million ha of forest cover, with 5 million ha in the mountainous Zagros area. Many of the improper uses in these forests, so far removed from the past, have resulted in significant degradation. The purpose of this paper is to check and compare the prepared methods, including the Iranian Ecological Model (with seven classes using Boolean logic), its revised method (with four classes using Boolean logic and four classes using geometric mean evaluation, as well) and a new model for ecological capability evaluation for better planning management for commercial and conservational forestry in Jahrom County located in Fars Province, Iran. In this study, we assessed the potential for conservational forestry in two ways: first, by adjusting the quantitative evaluation threshold of the model’s primary topographic criterion, and then, by removing this criterion altogether. It is worth noting that the necessary information, including climatic, topographic, soil and other types, was compiled by national and local organisations in Iran for the research. The improved Boolean technique (with $\mathrm{\text{kappa}}=0.53$) outperformed the Iranian Ecological Model (with $\mathrm{\text{kappa}}=0.06$), while the revised method using geometric mean assessment and calibration (with $\mathrm{\text{kappa}}=0.65$) outperformed the other methods tested. Furthermore, when all of the forestry capacity maps were compared, conservational forestry map demonstrated a higher capability after removing the topographic criterion in the region (with $\mathrm{\text{kappa}}=0.90$ for calibration technique), indicating conservational forestry’s potential in Jahrom County. Overall, because of its simplicity and excellent precision, this study may be utilised as a fundamental framework to evaluate ecological capability for other locations with similar conditions, and this model can help users and administrations undertake executive initiatives.