Introduction

As Trotter et al state in the abstract of their keynote paper. Environmental policy and management is increasingly required to optimise both the use of ecosystems for commodity supply and the maintenance of ecosystem function and viability to ensure continuity of life supporting services. This optimisation can not be achieved without access to improved information on ecosystem state and performance at landscape scales. So has nothing changed since the Second International Conference/Workshop on Integrating Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modelling, in 1993. Trotter et al demonstrate that there has, indeed, been a great deal of progress over those seven years but also identify challenges that need addressing in the future. Comber et al explore methodologies for the automation of Land Cover change detection, whilst Harris and Longley explore Urban Environments and challenges in drawing together environmental information with the wealth of other data describing urban characteristics.