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Green infrastructure (GI), a network of nature, semi-natural areas and green space, delivers essential ecosystem services which underpin human well-being and quality of life. Maintaining ecosystem services through the development of GI is therefore increasingly recognized by policies as a strategy to cope with potentially changing conditions in the future. This paper assessed how current trends of land-use change have an impact on the aggregated provision of eight ecosystem services at the regional scale of the European Union, measured by the Total Ecosystem Services Index (TESI8). Moreover, the paper reports how further implementation of GI across Europe can help maintain ecosystem services at baseline levels. Current demographic, economic and agricultural trends, which affect land use, were derived from the so called Reference Scenario. This scenario is established by the European Commission to assess the impact of energy and climate policy up to 2050. Under the Reference Scenario, economic growth, coupled with the total population, stimulates increasing urban and industrial expansion. TESI8 is expected to decrease across Europe between 0 and 5 % by 2020 and between 10 and 15 % by 2050 relative to the base year 2010. Based on regression analysis, we estimated that every additional percent increase of the proportion of artificial land needs to be compensated with an increase of 2.2 % of land that qualifies as green infrastructure in order to maintain ecosystem services at 2010 levels.

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In the last decade or so several studies have looked into the impacts of transport infrastructure improvements on decreasing territorial disparities. In those studies population levels are usually assumed static, although future population levels likely change in response to changing accessibility levels as well as to other factors. To test how much accessibility impacts may be affected by changes in population levels, this study explores the effects of foreseeable population changes on the accessibility improvements offered by large scale transport infrastructure investments. Methods In this study we compare accessibility measures from four cases, namely the current situation; one case in which only transport investments are taken into account; and two cases that include transport investments and two scenarios with differing future population distributions that in turn are simulated by the LUISA land-use model. The modelled transport investments are assumed to improve travel times. The study concentrates on accessibility effects in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. To provide a reference to the found results, the same computations are repeated with historical population and road network changes. Results The results indicate that differences in local population levels have a limited effect on average accessibility levels, but may have a large impact on territorial inequalities related to accessibility. Conclusions The findings in this study underpin the importance of incorporating future local population levels when assessing the impacts of infrastructure investments on territorial disparities. Keywords Accessibility. Cohesion. Land-use modelling. Land-use/transport interaction This article is part of the Topical Collection on Accessibility and Policy Making * Chris Jacobs-Crisioni

Shale gas is currently being explored in Europe as an alternative energy source to conventional oil and gas. There is, however, increasing concern about the potential environmental impacts of shale gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing (fracking). In this study, we focussed on the potential impacts on regional water resources within the Baltic Basin in Poland, both in terms of quantity and quality. The future development of the shale play was modeled for the time period 2015–2030 using the LUISA modeling framework. We formulated two scenarios which took into account the large range in technology and resource requirements, as well as two additional scenarios based on the current legislation and the potential restrictions which could be put in place. According to these scenarios, between 0.03 and 0.86 % of the total water withdrawals for all sectors could be attributed to shale gas exploitation within the study area. A screening-level assessment of the potential impact of the chemicals commonly used in fracking was carried out and showed that due to their wide range of physicochemical properties, these chemicals may pose additional pressure on freshwater ecosystems. The legislation put in place also influenced the resulting environmental impacts of shale gas extraction. Especially important are the protection of vulnerable ground and surface water resources and the promotion of more water-efficient technologies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00267-015-0454-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.