Flat Rooftops as Productive Landscapes in Birmingham

Due to the changing global environment,sustainable development has become a goal that many cities strive towards.Producing nutritious food is a component of sustainable development.The primary purpose of this paper is to assess Birmingham’s suitability for flat rooftop farming.This study explores two examples of rooftop farms:Brooklyn Grange in New York and Thammasat University,the largest rooftop farm in Asia,and they transformed the roof into a productive rooftop farm.This paper proses the tops of the buildings at Birmingham City University to be converted into a flat roof farm with an additional survey into the dietary habits of Birmingham inhabitants.With a productive landscape,one can achieve societal ideals such as urban or communal food self-sufficiency,reduce food imports,transit expenses,and consumer prices,encourage human interaction and connection,and at the same time provide diversified and healthy food.

Strategies and Economic Benefit Analysis for Productive Landscape of Rape Flower Sea in Cold Regions

The cold regions are located in high latitudes and cold climates.The local excellent ornamental plant resources are relatively scarce.The plant species that are suitable for both ornamental and productive benefits of landscape of flower sea construction are also even fewer.Therefore,it is imperative to introduce and screen the plant resources suitable for cold regions to create the landscape of flower sea.The rape,an oilseed crop,was used as a research object in order to create a productive flower landscape with both ornamental and economic values in cold regions.Four rape flower varieties,Qingza No.5,7,9,and 11,were introduced from Qinghai Hufeng Agricultural Science and Technology Group Co.,Ltd.They were planted in the experimental practice base of Northeast Agricultural University in three batches.Development characteristics and seed yield of rape flowers on different sowing dates were studied.The fuzzy probability method was used to comprehensively evaluate the varieties.The results showed that the rape flowers grew well in Harbin City during the experimental sowing period,which could form a good landscape of flower sea and had a considerable rapeseed yield.It could be widely used in cold urban and rural areas,such as Harbin City.In view of the experimental results,the strategies of creating a productive landscape of rape flower sea were proposed and the economic benefits were analyzed.It could change the status quo of a uniform landscape of flower sea in cold regions,help the development of rural tourism,and promote local economic income.

Research on the Significance and Approaches of Productive Landscape Introduced in Residential Districts

With the urbanization increasingly advancing at a high speed, a large number of farmlands have been turned into building lands, which leads the urban-rural conflicts more and more evident than before. Introducing the concept of productive landscape into residential districts, could relieve the contradiction between agricultural land and urban construction land, improve the modern lifestyle, provide a new perspective of landscape design philosophy. In this paper, based on the analysis of the present situation of residential green space, the significance and approaches of productive landscape in residential areas have been put forward, and suggestions of daily management and countermeasures about agricultural pollution problem have also been given.

STUDIES OF BEAUTIFUL GEOGRAPHY

This paper studies an interdisciplinary subject of aesthetics andgeography-beautiful geography .Firsly,it expounds and proves theobjective existence of the beautiful geography from the aims and tasks,objects and contents of study in aesthetics and geography in relation totheir branch sciences.Secondly, it discusses the study objects and studycontents and nature of the beautiful geography.It concludes that studyobjects of beautiful geography is the beautifolness of geographic objects.The contents of study contain:1) aesthetic laws and principles of thegeographic objects and human experience to the geographic objects,2)aesthetic value and appraisal of the geographic objects, use of aestheticvalue of the geographic objects; 3) perceptional and behavior effction of the beatiful geographic objects along with its uses; and 4) beautification ofthe geographic objects and constructing beautiful geographic objects.Lastly, it investigates the significance and use of the beautiful geography,especially in distribution of production,urban planning, the appraisal ofresources and regionalization and planning and the construction of tourism.

Noto Peninsula after GIAHS Designation: Conservation and Revitalization Efforts of Noto's Satoyama and Satoumi

The “Noto’sSatoyama andSatoumi” in Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan is a system of Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes （SEPLS） mosaics interconnected with highly productive coastal areas that have been formed and maintained through long-term human inlfuence, which supports not only its diverse and traditional agriculture, forestry and ifsheries, but also sustains local livelihoods and conserves its lfourishing biodiversity. Since the designation of Noto as Globaly Important Agricultural Heritage Systems （GIAHS） in 2011, there have been active developments of conservation and revitalization efforts amongst the local gov-ernments, and communities, as well as pouring interest from the academia, international community and private sector. The paper wil discuss the developments of Noto’s GIAHS through examining several case studies of recent conservation and revitalization efforts of new initiatives and those building on existing schemes. The report wil be based on literature reviews, interviews with and information provided by Ishikawa Prefectural Government and ifeld surveys conducted. It is found that modest but steady steps are being taken in conservation of GIAHS and Noto is taking an active role contributing to the GIAHS initiative.