Dear Colleagues,

The impacts of fossil fuel use, land use changes, and production and consumption patterns on global heating and biodiversity loss is evident, especially in industrialized countries. IPCC reports, reports of IPBES, and numerous country studies have highlighted the manifold crises challenging all sectors of our economies and societies. Spatial planning and infrastructure policies are especially susceptible to these challenges (e.g., adaption to global heating), but are provide major negative contributions to these crises. The linkages between ecosystem services to spatial (land use) planning and infrastructure policies remain vague; many land use instruments do not specifically account for ecosystem services. This Special Issue will consider these important connections.

Original research articles and review papers are welcome. Research topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Categories and types of ecosystem services (ES) important for spatial planning;
• Differences between urban and rural land use (planning), and ecosystem services;
• Consideration of ecosystem services in spatial planning and infrastructure policies;
• Measurement, assessment, valuation of ecosystem services for spatial planning;
• Case studies and examples of successful acknowledgement of ecosystem services in planning;
• Instruments and frameworks for including ecosystem services in spatial planning and infrastructure policies/projects;
• Global or regional perspectives of ecosystem services in planning;
• Impacts of planning and infrastructures on ecosystem services (including methods for assessing impacts);
• Contribution of ecosystem services to sustainable planning;
• Determinants of ecosystem services and the degradation of ES.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Michael Getzner
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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 (ES)
• assessment/valuation of ES
• ES and spatial (land use) planning
• infrastructure policies