Modelling environmental variables for geohazards and georesources assessment to support sustainable land-use decisions in Zaragoza (Spain) M.T. Lamelas a,b, ⁎, A. Hoppe a , J. de la Riva b , O. Marinoni c a Institut für Angewandte Geowissenschaften, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstrasse 9, D-64287, Darmstadt, Germany b Dep. Geografía y Ordenación del Territorio, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009, Zaragoza, Spain c CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Qld Bioscience Precinct, 306 Carmody Road, St. Lucia QLD, 4067, Australia abstract article info Article history: Received 23 January 2006 Accepted 5 October 2008 Available online xxxx Keywords: Erosion susceptibility Agricultural capability GIS Ebro Basin Spain Land-use decisions are usually made on the basis of a variety of criteria. While it is common practice to integrate economic, ecological and social (triple bottom line) criteria, explicit geoscientific factors are relatively rarely considered. If a planned land use involves an interaction with the geosphere, geoscientific aspects should be playing a more important role in the process. With the objective to facilitate a sustainable land-use decision-making a research project was initiated. The area around the city of Zaragoza, in the Ebro Basin of northern Spain, was chosen due to its high degree of industrialisation and urbanization. The area is exposed to several geohazards (e.g., sinkholes and erosion) that may have significant negative effects on current and future land uses. Geographical Information System (GIS) technologies are used to process the complex geoscientific information. Further GIS analysis comprised the creation of an erosion susceptibility map that follows the ITC (International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation) system of terrain analysis. The agricultural capability of the soil was determined using the Microleis System. We identify geomorphologic units that show high susceptibility to erosion and high agricultural potential and suggest a method to implement this information in a land-use planning process. Degraded slopes developed upon Tertiary rocks show the highest susceptibility to erosion and low values of agricultural capability, whereas the flat valley bottoms and irrigated flood plains have the highest values of agricultural capability. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction One of the principal challenges for the 21st century is supporting the sustainable development of large cities. However, the relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability is complex. For instance due to the rapid pace of urban development, interactions with the geosphere have largely been ignored in the peripheral parts of Zaragoza city (Fig. 1). This development has led to the destruction of significant infrastructure due to land subsidence, the misuse of valuable agricultural land, the destruction of valuable natural areas, and an increasing contamination of aquifers. The United Nation's Agenda 21 (http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/) suggests that all countries should undertake an appropriate national inventory of their land resources, establish a land information system, classify land resources according to their most appropriate uses, and identify environmentally fragile or disaster-prone areas for special protection measures. Although land-use decisions are usually made on the basis of triple bottom line criteria, geoscientific aspects are rarely considered or are regarded as being of less importance (Marker, 1998; Hoppe et al., 2006). However, most georesources, especially raw materials, are inherently non-renewable resources; if we use these resources today, future generations cannot use them again. The consideration of geoscientific aspects therefore deserves more attention. To fulfil land management functions, the tools to be used must be updatable, multiscalar, and contain a wide rage of data concerning the environment; i.e., physical, biotic, and anthropogenic aspects and their interrelations. From this viewpoint, a geographic information system (GIS) is required (Amadio et al., 2002). In recent years, the development of Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) has proved to be a considerable aid in efforts to solve the land-use conflicts that commonly arise in sustainable land-use management schemes. Such systems combine the benefits of GIS tools and decision support techniques, making them suitable in supporting the sustainable development of urban areas via land-use suitability analysis. Based on the above, the area surrounding Zaragoza, which represents a large and growing urban nucleus, merits closer investigation in terms of geoscientific factors. Thus, a research project was initiated to develop a methodology which will facilitate the geohazards and georesources assessment and the decision-making of different land-use patterns under geoscientific aspects in a semi-arid environment of the Ebro Geomorphology xxx (2009) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. Dept. Geografía y Ordenación del Territorio, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009, Zaragoza, Spain. Tel.: +34 976761000x3909; fax: +34 976761506. E-mail addresses: tlamelas@unizar.es (M.T. Lamelas), ahoppe@geo.tu-darmstadt.de (A. Hoppe), delariva@unizar.es (J. de la Riva), oswald.marinoni@csiro.au (O. Marinoni). GEOMOR-02945; No of Pages 16 0169-555X/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2008.10.021 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geomorphology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geomorph ARTICLE IN PRESS Please cite this article as: Lamelas, M.T., et al., Modelling environmental variables for geohazards and georesources assessment to support sustainable land-use decisions in Zaragoza (Spain), Geomorphology (2009), doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2008.10.021