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The European Union requires member states to estimate their wine growing potential. For this purpose, most member states have developed or updated vineyard registers. The present study suggests locating vineyards using medium spatial resolution satellite imagery. The work was carried out using Landsat images that were validated for the Designation of Origin "Bierzo", León, Spain. The methodology described in this paper yields a producer's accuracy of 0.88 and a user's accuracy of 0.63. The vineyard areas for each municipality were estimated from the classified images by linear regression, with fits of R2 > 0.80. The method gives good results at the municipal scale.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Commission considers water supply and sanitation on agricultural and forestry holdings as a part of water management policy. In this sense, this study analyses the current situation in Galicia, European Union, in terms of the management of wastes derived from dairying, and the attitudes of farmers toward this issue and government regulations. The study was carried out by conducting a field survey to 4384 farm owners. The farms were classified according to the income level (size) and the priority status of the farm, and the current situation was defined based on the results obtained from the survey. The most positive aspect revealed by the survey is the willingness of farmers to improve wastewater management, which is a meaningful data because 72% of the farmers declared to use some system for wastewater collection or treatment.

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Green infrastructure has acquired greater importance in recent years in relation to climate change adaptation. Green infrastructure planning has been identified as a new and innovative means of land planning that can contribute to preventing the impacts of climate change. However, this has been explored more thoroughly in urban areas than at the regional scale. The present study proposes a methodology including multi-criteria evaluation techniques for assessing the ESS involved in the fight against climate change and for the spatial planning of multifunctional green infrastructure areas based on the results of this assessment. Application of the methodology for green infrastructure planning aimed at confronting climate change at landscape level in the region of Galicia (NW Spain) successfully delimited multifunctional green infrastructure zones. Results show that delimited zones have a higher provision potential for more ESS than protected natural areas and areas that are not part of the green infrastructure.

Resumen: Este artículo describe el desarrollo del sistema de información del Banco de Tierras de Galicia, organismo gallego que actúa de intermediario entre propietarios y agricultores para fomentar el arrendamiento de tierras y evitar su abandono. Sus objetivos son realizar la gestión interna del Banco, difundirlo entre el público y facilitar distintos tipos de tramitaciones a través de Internet. El sistema, disponible en http://www.bantegal.com/sitegal, está formado por una aplicación web con componentes SIG que ofrecen una mayor y mejor información sobre las parcelas y su entorno. El desarrollo se apoya en el uso de software libre y en la utilización de estándares para el manejo de la información geográfica. El artículo detalla la arquitectura, componentes y funcionalidades del sistema y ofrece datos estadísticos de su utilización.

Planning Support Systems (PSS) comprise a wide variety of geo‐technological tools related to GIS and spatial modeling aimed at addressing land planning processes. This article describes the OpenRules system, a PSS based on a previous system called RULES. Among OpenRules new features are its architecture, based exclusively on free and open source software, and its applicability to all land use types, including rural and urban uses. In addition, OpenRules incorporates an unlimited number of land evaluation factors and a new objective in land use spatial allocation. OpenRules has been programmed in Java and implemented as a module of the free GIS software gvSIG, with full integration between the GIS and the decision support tools. Decision support tools include multicriteria evaluation, multiobjective linear programming and heuristic techniques, which support three basic stages of land use planning processes, namely land suitability evaluation, land use area optimization and land use spatial allocation. The application of OpenRules to the region of La Troncal, Ecuador, demonstrates its capability to generate alternative and coherent solutions through a scientific and justified procedure at low cost in terms of time and resources.