Landscape Ecology and Environmental Security: basic concepts and regional applications for the Medit

This chapter offers a framework of analysis for studying linkages between landscape ecology and environmental security with a special focus on environmental threats, challenges, vulnerabilities, and risks on the common and differentiated trends on both shores of the Mediterranean between 1950 and 2050. The chapter reviews the debate on reconceptualizing of security for different worldviews of analysts, mind-sets of policymakers, scientific schools, and research programs in the social sciences. The PSR model by OECD and the DPSIR model by EEA will be developed further into a PEISOR model that will be illustrated for the Mediterranean region by addressing both common geo-ecological trends (air, water, soil) and major differences on either shore (population, agriculture, urbanization) by referring to common environmental and different socioeconomic challenges in the Mediterranean. Extreme outcomes will be addressed such as hazards, migration, environmental crises, and conflicts. The chapter concludes with contributions of landscape science to vulnerability mapping and early warning.

Keywords: Security; PSR; DPSIR and PEISOR model; Mediterranean; global environental change; climate change; natural hazards; landscape ecology