The Second Edition: Ecosystem Services Design from Single Space Solution to Landscape Vision

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue of Land titled “The Second Edition: Ecosystem Services Design from Single Space Solution to Landscape Vision”.

Green spaces can be designed to serve as ecological multifunctional spaces capable of supporting priority ecosystem services and co-benefits to reduce the ecological footprint of human activities and increase the carrying capacity of landscape and urban systems. Ecosystem service design must include physical structures, such as implementing ecosystems in landscape and urban space to provide ecological processes that can mitigate environmental issues, but also consider specific social activities and economic benefits that can be derived from their utilizations to maximize human wellbeing.

Therefore, a broad range of solutions can be implemented in both private and public spaces involving different stakeholders. This requires a cultural leap and new vision for green space design to support priority ecosystem services that are capable of creating connections between high ecological resilience, new business and economic opportunities, and multiscale environmental and cultural aspects.

This can include the planning and design of solutions that can support climate and air regulation, storm mitigations, energy use reduction, biodiversity and habitat restorations, esthetics, and cultural aspects in terms of stress mitigation and social integration with reference also to the immigration process. Therefore, the solution can involve a single project but also a network of natural-based solutions that can represent green infrastructure in the landscape.

Research experimentation to identify new solutions in landscape and urban planning is hampered by the impossibility of repeating experiments or attempts as is usually done in laboratory experiments. Therefore, each project and process to develop ecosystem services or green infrastructure in landscape and urban space can represent a good example to reflect on the success or failure of human choices. These can serve as useful knowledge and information for new application development in sustainability at different scales.

This Special Issue aims to bring together a network of knowledge and, where possible, to report practical experiences in green space design and management with a critical vision to support new research and applications and stimulate innovation through the “learn by doing” approach.

Therefore, the Special Issue will promote research, review, and other types of manuscripts that focus on promoting ecosystem regeneration, ecosystem services, and green infrastructure and their management, as well as new policies and tools for their promotions and diffusion with a bottom-up (from a single applicative case to analyze methodologies and effectiveness) or top-down approach (from research to transfer in an applicative way).

Papers may include:

• Research studies on the development of specific natural-based solutions able to improve human health in landscape and urban planning and design;
• Assessment of ecosystem services and disservices provided by natural-based solutions and green infrastructure application;
• Reviews of green infrastructure project applications realized in the real world;
• Research promoting new indicators, approaches, and methodologies to monitor vegetation status, social and economic impacts, and human wellbeing linked to ecosystem service improvement;
• Reports explaining the approaches used in urban and rural landscape ecological restoration design;
• Research on the ability of green infrastructure or specific natural-based solutions to increase the carrying capacity of an urban system or reduce the ecological footprint of the city carrying out ecological processes instead of high-impact technology;
• Market approaches and social–ecological strategies in the ecosystem service design capable of stimulating private investment in green spaces at different scales creating share value;
• Transdisciplinary approaches to ecosystem service design involving researchers, private landowners, companies, experts, and developers reflecting together on the problem and solutions;
• Research and reports on how to ensure stakeholder collaboration and community engagement in ecosystem service design;
• Research and reviews of social promotion activities in ecosystem service design.

Dr. Teodoro Semeraro
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• ecosystem services design
• landscape and urban planning
• natural-based solutions
• green infrastructure
• ecological restoration

• Ecosystem Services Design from Single Space Solution to Landscape Vision in Land (10 articles)