Security patterns in landscape planning with a case in south China

How can we design and manage a landscape following certain patterns that can most or more effectively safeguard landscape-related processes while maximally providing possibilities for changes? This thesis tries to answer this question through the concept of security patterns (SPs)--portions and positions that have or potentially have strategically critical influences on landscape processes. The use of these SPs may more effectively promote or control certain processes of our concern.; An operational framework is proposed to identify and apply SPs. Using the Red Stone National Park in south China as a case study, ecological, visual and agricultural SPs are explored. The dynamics of the ecological processes is represented by accessibility surfaces based on calculations of minimum accumulative resistance. Four structural components can be identified on the accessibility surfaces: buffer zones, inter-source linkages, radiating routes and strategic points. These four components, specified by certain quantitative and qualitative parameters, together with the identified sources compose the ecological SPs at various security levels. The visual SPs are identified by the evaluation of landscape sensitivity which is a result of visibility and preference analyses. It is found that a landscape is not equally perceived, nor equally appreciated by farmers and tourists, who will claim different visual SPs. The identification of agricultural SPs is based on the convertibility surface that conceives agricultural conversion as a horizontal process cumulatively affected by the distance and intermediate landscapes, as well as based on land resources initially determining the process of conversion.; SPs can be used to develop various change alternatives within the same security level, by differentiating management concentration, checking and constraining change models, guiding improvement and spatial bartering. SPs are 'stop signs' in the decision-making course that may reduce the risk of landscape changes. The reliability of some of the process-simulation models proposed in this thesis, however, needs to be tested through field observations.; GIS is extensively applied in this research, and it shows great potentials when integrated with the SP approach in landscape planning.