The importance of studying coastal areas is justified by their resources, ecosystem services, and key role played in socio-economic development. Coastal landscapes are subject to increasing demands and pressures, requiring in-depth analyses for finding appropriate tools or policies for a sustainable landscape management. The present study addresses this issue globally, based on case studies from three continents: Romania (Europe), Algeria (Africa), and Vietnam (Asia), focusing on the anthropogenic pressure resulting from land use/land cover change or urban sprawl, taking into account the role of socioeconomic and political factors. The methodology consisted of producing maps and computing and analyzing indicators, correlating geospatial and socio-economic data in a synergistic manner to explore the changes of landscapes, and identify the specific driving forces. The findings show that the pressure of urbanization and tourism on coastal areas increased, while the drivers and impacts vary. Urbanization is due to derogatory planning in Romania and Algeria, and different national and local goals in Vietnam. The two drivers determine local exemptions from the national regulations, made for profit. In addition to the need for developing and enforcing policies for stopping the degradation and restoring the ecosystems, the findings underline the importance of international cooperation in policy development.

Urbanization is a worldwide process, occurring rapidly with adverse consequences on the environment and people. More exactly, urbanization aggravates natural risks and creates additional articial risks; this is a key issue for urban planning, which can reduce the exposure and negative outcomes if its provisions are properly enforced. This article is based on observations from Bejaia, Algeria. Each year, the city suffers from disasters including oods, forest res and landslides. This situation has led to the question whether urban planning observes the regulations from other domains. In order to answer it, different risks threatening the city were modeled and mapped. The results consist of computing the number of buildings situated within non-aedicandi zones by the type of risk. The results show that 15,832 buildings violate the law. Moreover, natural hazards (78.31%) are a more important threat than the articial ones (21.69%). The most important natural risks are due to forest res (44.82%), and the explosion of the industrial zones (15.24%) is the dominant articial risk. The ndings show that planning can help reducing the risk exposure within the urban areas, if the planning provisions are properly enforced. Moreover, the article makes a signicant contribution to demonstrating the possible consequences of sacricing long-term safety for short-term political interests.

Marine and coastal biodiversity is crucial to the planet’s functioning and offers ecosystem services that guarantee the health, wealth, and well-being of the entire humanity. This is why, evaluating the current body of research on coral reefs is essential for understanding the unprecedented growth of this field, which covers many topics including climate change, biotic interactions, bioresources, future bioprospecting, and biodiversity in general. Such an evaluation requires both descriptive summaries and co-citation analyses to understand the expansive nature of this particular research and identify research gaps. Given the importance of the topic and the fact that it is insufficiently addressed, this study fills in a gap regarding coral reefs studies. We analyzed coral reef research published in the Web of Science Core Collection database between 1970 and 2021, using the CiteSpace software. This gave a total of 20,362 records, focusing on variables including the list of contributors (author, affiliation, and country), total publications over time, dual map overlay, co-citation analysis (co-cited author and documents), cluster networks, and popular keywords and their burstness. We found that coral reef publications increased over time, with coastal countries (the USA, Australia, and Japan) being among the highest contributors. Researchers from Australia, New Zealand, and the USA are the top producers of coral reef research worldwide. Unsurprisingly, the journal Coral Reefs was the most productive journal. Interestingly, we found that keywords such as “great barrier reef,” “climate change,” and “predation” were among the top cited and most influential in coral reef science. To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify trends in coral reef research using scientometric analyses based on the CiteSpace software.

The mosque of Sidi El Benna is one of the Islamic buildings of Tlemcen built up during the Zianid era. In this study its planes, facades and sections were drawn based on different measurements, because this style is characterized by the use of geometric proportions. In the next step the measurements of heights, widths, lengths and angles of different architectural elements were compared in order to find arithmetic and harmonic proportions. The last ones were found especially in the golden number Φ, equal to 1.618. In addition, the cubit of time was computed and found equal to 0.4375 m, almost equal to the Roman one -0.444 m. Other principles of geometric composition, such as repetition and symmetry, were also identified.

L'article présente plusieurs principes utilisés dans la conservation biologique (par les aires naturelles protégées) qui servent comme sources d'inspiration pour la conservation du patrimoine architectural. Sous l'influence du Club de Rome et sa théorie de « croissance zéro », l'idée de la conservation a été aperçue comme la préservation ou la conservation stricte, dans un état intact, incompatible avec le développement et, cependant, utopique. La nouvelle vue agit pour la maintenance dans un « état favorable » qui permet le développement et n'affecte pas la capacité de soutien des systèmes écologiques. Les principes examinés dans l'étude sont la conservation fonctionnelle (dans les limites des capacités de charge) permettant une gestion progressive des activités de conservation, le choix des bâtiments représentatifs à protéger, l'implication des communautés locales et le soutien international. L'idée centrale de l'article est que le soutien de la communauté locale est très important pour la conservation. Dans ce contexte, les principes de la conservation biologique-conservation fonctionnelle, gestion différentiée, représentativité, soutien local et international, zonage interne, coopération nationale et internationale-sont également applicables à la conservation du patrimoine architectural.