Chapters authored
Comparison of the Land Uses and Sustainable Development in Small Islands: The Case of Skiathos Island, Greece
The Island of Skiathos occupies a total area of 50 km2, accounting for 1.6% of the area of the prefecture of Magnesia and 0.28% of the Region of Thessaly, Greece. The land is hilly and can be divided into farmland, meadows, woodlands, land covered by water and land occupied by settlements and roads. Also, a large part is occupied by burnt areas that resulted from the fire of 2007. The aim of this chapter is to present the evolution of existing land uses at the Island of Skiathos during the past decades. With the contribution of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the orthophotomaps, the spatial planning of the land uses can be evaluated for all these years and the total area can also be calculated. Our results are important for understanding the impacts of land uses on ecosystems in the frame of sustainable development. There has been no other research regarding land uses in Skiathos Island in the past, and, also, this is the first digitization of the area. Finally, two sustainable spatial development scenarios for the Island of Skiathos are proposed. The first scenario relates to the results obtained from a prediction (application of the model of automatic cellular) while the second scenario refers to a more realistic model of development with focus on environmental protection and sustainable development.
Part of the book: Urban Agriculture