Adrienne Grêt-Regamey

ETH Zurich | ETH Zürich · Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development

This work is an experimental contribution to assessing the relationship between place attachment and well-being in urban parks in a mobility and migratory context. Using virtual park visits, we aimed at finding out whether place attachment and familiarity with parks are related to physiological responses, i.e. relaxation/arousal. The experimental s...

Using a participatory Bayesian network-based land-use decision model, we simulate future land-use patterns under various scenarios, including changes in vanilla and clove market prices as well as changes in irrigation water availability and potential harvest failures. Findings indicate that specifically the vanilla value chain (compared to the clov...

Urban landscapes face significant challenges, as they must transform towards sustainability while remaining resilient. Urban landscape transformation is a complex task for landscape designers. They must not only create new solutions for landscapes but also ensure that their proposals are capable to deliver and maintain key ecosystems services over...

Urban expansion is generating unprecedented homogenization of landscapes across the world. This uniformization of urban forms brings along dramatic environmental, social, and health problems. Reverting such processes requires activating people’s sense of place, their feeling of caring for their surroundings, and their community engagement. While em...

The increasing complexity of the dynamics captured in Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) change modelling has made model behaviour less transparent and calibration more extensive. For cellular automata models in particular, this is compounded by the fact that validation is typically performed indirectly, using final simulated change maps; rather than d...

Economic growth contributes to biodiversity loss and does not necessarily contribute to wellbeing. Thus, when developing biodiversity scenarios, we should explore societal futures where economic growth is not a precondition. However, it is not clear how and by whom a degrowth scenario for biodiversity could be developed. This is so because there ar...

Abstract: Investigating pathways for the transformative adaptation of socio-ecological systems (SESs) frequently requires simulating the development of aspects of the system in both space and time, often into the future. In many cases this is achieved through the creation of predictive models which are calibrated and validated using historical data...

The identification of landscape classes facilitates the implementation of planning strategies. Although landscape patterns are key distinctive features of landscape classes, existing unsupervised clustering techniques for clustering landscapes rely on categorical input data to quantify such patterns and consider only a limited number of pattern met...

CONTEXT Farm numbers are steadily declining in Europe and globally while farms become larger and more intensive. Driven in part by worsening macroeconomic conditions, these structural changes and the associated rationalization of agricultural supply chains have affected social relations in rural areas. In turn, farmers' social contacts influence fa...

Densification of cities threatens the provision of public open space for people living in and around cities. The increasing evidence of the many benefits of recreational walking for physical and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted an urgent need for fostering the availability of public open space. In this context, urban plann...

This paper examines how mixes (wind, PV, power lines) of different renewable energy infrastructure (REI) impact people's preferences for various landscape types. This does not only involve the visual character but also meanings that are assigned to these landscapes, which together influence the perceived landscape quality. The research is based on...

Worldwide, urbanization leads to increased pressure on prime agricultural land with irreversible impacts on the provision of life-supporting services such as food and drinking water production or habitat for plants and animals. As a basis for designing new policy instruments to protect soil resources, we applied Q-methodology to assess factors that...

The devastating 2015 earthquakes in Nepal highlighted the need for effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) in mountains, which are inherently subject to hazards and increasingly vulnerable to extreme events. As multiple UN policy frameworks stress, DRR is crucial to mitigate the mounting environmental and socioeconomic costs of disasters globally....

Mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) are vital to humanity, providing ecosystem services to over half the planet's human population. Despite their importance, there has been no global assessment of threats to MtSES, even as they face unprecedented challenges to their sustainability. With survey data from 57 MtSES sites worldwide, we test a co...

Recent years have seen a massive development of geospatial sensing systems informing the use of space. However, rarely do these sensing systems inform transformation towards urban sustainability. Drawing on four global urban case examples, we conceptualize how passive and active sensing systems should be harnessed to secure an inclusive, sustainabl...

Integrated regional planning aims to achieve sustainable development by considering multiple socio-economic, environmental, and ecological goals. However, determining the synergies and trade-offs between sustainability goals is a challenging task that requires an in depth analysis of the system-level effects of the implementation of planning polici...

Ecosystem service (ES) mapping has been developed with the aim of supporting ecosystem management, but ES maps often lack information about uncertainty and risk, which is essential for decision-making. In this paper, we use a risk-based approach to map ES in mountain forests, which are experiencing an increasing rate of natural disturbances, such a...

The identification of relationships between multiple ecosystem services (ES) (i.e. trade-offs, synergies and bundles) is essential for ES management. However, the identification of ES relationships may be susceptible to spatial autocorrelation — a statistical bias due to ES observations being related to each other across space. Spatial autocorrelat...

Scientists increasingly cross their disciplinary boundaries and connect with local stakeholders to jointly solve complex problems. Working with stakeholders means higher legitimacy and supports practical impact of research. Games provide a tool to achieve such transdisciplinary collaboration. In this paper, we explore the use of a game in a partici...

Abstract: Assessing Ecological Infrastructure (EI) necessitates value judgements with respect to the importance of different components such as ecosystem services and biodiversity. As such it is crucial that assessments as well as the planning of policies to maintain EI incorporate the participation of relevant stakeholders. However, implementing t...

Presentation of the study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the demand for recreational spaces in Swiss Cities.

Global sustainability targets demand transformative changes. Nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining traction in science and policy, but their potential for transformative change remains unexplored. We provide a framework to evaluate how NbS contribute to transformative change and apply it to 93 NbS from mountain social-ecological systems (SES). T...

Finding the “right” sites for developing renewable energy systems (RES) is one of the major challenges in planning strategies for energy transitions. The visibility aspects of such infrastructure are important factors that explain local opposition. Classical visibility and viewshed analyses of RES disregard people’s perceptions and estimations of n...

Global sustainability targets demand transformative changes. Nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining traction in science and policy, but their potential for transformative change remains unexplored. We provide a framework to evaluate how NbS contribute to transformative change and apply it to 93 NbS from mountain social-ecological systems (SES). T...

The microclimatic conditions of the urban environment influence significantly the thermal comfort of human beings. One of the main human biometeorology parameters of thermal comfort is the Mean Radiant Temperature (Tmrt), which quantifies effective radiative flux reaching a human body. Simulation tools have proven useful to analyze the radiative be...

Increasing temperatures and snow scarcity pose a serious threat to ski tourism. While the impacts of climate change on ski tourism have been elaborated extensively, little is known so far on the vulnerability of winter tourism towards both internal climate variability and climate change. We use a 50-member single model large ensemble from a regiona...

Dynamic process‐based modelling is often proposed as a powerful tool to understand complex socio‐environmental problems and to provide sustainable solutions as it allows disentangling cause and effect of human behaviour and environmental dynamics. However, the impact of such models in decision‐making and to support policy‐making has so far been ver...

The consideration of urban ecosystem services becomes increasingly important when planning compact cities. We implement a multi-objective optimization approach to support decision-makers in their efforts to develop green and dense cities. Embedded in a participatory process, the applied genetic algorithm allows us to assess spatial tradeoffs betwee...

Mountain forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and protection from natural hazards. Forest cover in the European Alps has increased over the last century, but in recent years, these forests have experienced an increasing rate of natural disturbances by agents such as windthrow, bark beetle outbreaks, and...

The following paper introduces the concept of place for land system science to better understand how the transformation of place, as place-making, can be operationalised. The aim is to operationalise place with the motivation that a deeper understanding of people–place interactions can advance knowledge of land systems towards practicable solutions...

Renewable energy systems (RES) can impact landscape aesthetics and influence the public's perception of the landscape and their acceptance of large infrastructure projects. Perceptual processes have consequences for both physiological and behavioral reactions to visual landscape changes and have not been systematically assessed in the context of RE...

As global environmental change continues to accelerate and intensify, science and society are turning to trans-disciplinary approaches to facilitate transitions to sustainability. Modeling is increasingly used as a technological tool to improve our understanding of social-ecological systems (SES), encourage collaboration and learning, and facilitat...

Die Ökologische Infrastruktur (ÖI) ist für die Erhaltung und Förderung der Biodiversität unerlässlich und stellt lebenswichtige Leistungen für den Menschen bereit. ÖI basieren auf natürlichen und halbnatürlichen Lebensräumen. Die Entwicklung und der Schutz solcher ÖI wurden als zentrale Schritte für den Erfolg der Strategie Biodiversität Schweiz (S...

Ecological infrastructure (EI), which is a planned network of high-quality natural and semi-natural elements designed and managed to provide ecosystem services, has the potential to ensure rich and resilient biodiversity. Within the Action Plan for the Swiss Biodiversity Strategy of the Swiss Confederation, the pilot project known as “ValPar.CH – V...

The urban underground is increasingly recognized as a multifunctional resource important for achieving urban resilience. However, it is often neglected in planning processes. Since this can lead to undesired urban developments, approaches are required to take both the space above and below ground into account. In particular, there is a lack of visu...

Agricultural transitions from subsistence to export-oriented production make households more reliant on volatile agricultural commodity markets and can increase households' exposure to crop price and yield shocks. At the same time, subsistence farming is also highly vulnerable to crop failures. In this work, we define household livelihood vulnerabi...

Ecosystem services assessments have the potential to support negotiating the complex trade-offs between conservation goals and other economic, political and social agendas across administrative borders, spatial and temporal scales. While earlier studies showed the global importance of tropical areas in supplying ecosystem services, the specific con...

The Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) promotes basic and applied research to understand how drivers and processes of global change present challenges and opportunities in mountain social-ecological systems. It convenes a global network that collectively generates and synthesizes knowledge on global change in mountains that also supports decisions...

The paper evolves on the discourse of digital three-dimensional (3-D) modeling methods in the fields of landscape architecture and landscape planning. Digital design and planning methods used at present rely on mapping and modeling techniques that fall short of engaging the physical form of the landscape. However, form-specific knowledge is essenti...

A profound understanding of actors’ perspectives on issues to be resolved is essential for researchers and practitioners in integrated natural resource management. Existing mental model approaches to systematically elicit such perspectives have been based on qualitative interviews, which implies small sample sizes or time-consuming analyses. Few st...

3D simulations are increasingly used in virtual reality laboratory experiments for measuring emotional responses in order to gain a deeper understanding of the perception and judgment of visual landscape quality. Ensuring that these simulations are valid for the intended task is crucial. We demonstrate how we tested animations of a flight into 3D p...

Snow is a sensitive component of the climate system. In many parts of the world, water stored as snow is a vital resource for agriculture, tourism and the energy sector. As uncertainties in climate change assessments are still relatively large, it is important to investigate the interdependencies between internal climate variability and anthropogen...

Large scale and rapid urbanization processes call for a better quality of urban planning to support human well-being. While compact cities aim to reduce land consumption, densification puts pressure on the remaining green areas, influencing ecosystem services provision and ultimately the life quality of the growing urban population. Supply of and d...

Crop booms in forest frontiers are a major contributor to land conversion and deforestation. In this study, we investigate the smallholder-driven northern Laos rubber boom in two case study areas (CSAs) with different speed and intensity of rubber expansion. We assess the relative importance of market, contextual, and behavioral factors in fosterin...

Degradation of ecosystems and the related loss of ecosystem services have called for new policies to achieve no net loss (NNL) of or even net gain between detrimental environmental impacts and restoration or preservation measures. While biodiversity offsetting has a long tradition, soils have rarely been considered in the accounting. Considering th...

Instruments for capturing the experiential and social values of the landscape are not yet well developed. These are needed in a format that is suitable for a comprehensive landscape impact assessment derived from public perceptions in participatory processes. Concerning the assessment of future wind parks, a critical deficit lies in appropriate vis...

Abstract. Snow is a sensitive component of the climate system. In many parts of the world, water, stored as snow, is a vital resource for agriculture, tourism and the energy sector. As uncertainties in climate change assessments are still relatively large, it is important to investigate the interdependencies between internal climate variability and...

Forest frontiers worldwide reveal trade-offs that are key in mitigating global change. In the forest frontiers of northeast Madagascar, land-use changes result from decisions made by smallholder farmers. In the past, subsistence needs led to increasing shifting cultivation, resulting in forest degradation and deforestation. This study focuses on in...

Urban ecosystem service (UES) is becoming an influential concept to guide the planning, design, and management of urban landscapes towards urban sustainability. However, its use is hindered by definitional ambiguity, and the conceptual bases underpinning its application remain weak. This is exemplified by two different but equally valid interpretat...

Bayesian Networks (BNs) are commonly used to model socio-ecological systems, as their graphical structure supports participatory modelling, they can integrate quantitative data and qualitative knowledge, and account for uncertainty. Although the spatial and temporal dimensions are important in socio-ecological systems, there is a lack of openly ava...

Residents of industrialized countries place increasingly more value on leisure time. For many alpine and remote municipalities, revenues from tourism and recreation belong to the most important sources of income. At the same time, these activities generate large carbon footprints through traffic. Identifying the drivers of demand for outdoor recrea...

Residents of industrialized countries place increasingly more value on outdoor recreation. For many alpine and remote municipalities, revenues from tourism and recreation belong to the most important sources of income. At the same time, these activities generate large carbon footprints through traffic. In order to understand what drives the demand...

Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit den Präferenzen der Schweizer Bevölkerung in Bezug auf Infrastrukturen zur Produktion erneuerbarer Energie (engl. IPRE: Wind, Photovoltaik) in charakteristischen Schweizer Landschaften. Es wurde eine repräsentative Online-Panelumfrage (n = 1063) durchgeführt, die ein visuelles Entscheidungsexperiment beinhalt...

Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit den Präferenzen der Schweizer Bevölkerung in Bezug auf Infrastrukturen zur Produktion erneuerbarer Energie (engl. IPRE: Wind, Photovoltaik) in charakteristischen Schweizer Landschaften. Es wurde eine repräsentative Online-Panelumfrage (n = 1063) durchgeführt, die ein visuelles Entscheidungsexperiment beinhalt...