Forest landscapes across western North America (wNA) have experienced extensive changes over the last two centuries, while climatic warming has become a global reality over the last four decades. ...Resulting interactions between historical increases in forested area and density and recent rapid warming, increasing insect mortality, and wildfire burned areas, are now leading to substantial abrupt landscape alterations. These outcomes are forcing forest planners and managers to identify strategies that can modify future outcomes that are ecologically and/or socially undesirable. Past forest management, including widespread harvest of fire- and climate-tolerant large old trees and old forests, fire exclusion (both Indigenous and lightning ignitions), and highly effective wildfire suppression have contributed to the current state of wNA forests. These practices were successful at meeting short-term demands, but they match poorly to modern realities. Hagmann et al. review a century of observations and multiscale, multi-proxy, research evidence that details widespread changes in forested landscapes and wildfire regimes since the influx of European colonists. Over the preceding 10 millennia, large areas of wNA were already settled and proactively managed with intentional burning by Indigenous tribes. Prichard et al. then review the research on management practices historically applied by Indigenous tribes and currently applied by some managers to intentionally manage forests for resilient conditions. They address 10 questions surrounding the application and relevance of these management practices. Here, we highlight the main findings of both papers and offer recommendations for management. We discuss progress paralysis that often occurs with strict adherence to the precautionary principle; offer insights for dealing with the common problem of irreducible uncertainty and suggestions for reframing management and policy direction; and identify key knowledge gaps and research needs.
Multifunctional Land Use Mander, Ülo; Helming, Katharina; Wiggering, Hubert
2007, 2007-03-12
eBook
This book is a major contribution to the debate on future land development strategies, as well as helping to supporting land use decision making at all levels. Scientists from across Europe installed ...the Landscape Tomorrow network to prepare for upcoming challenges in research on sustainable land development. The book's interdisciplinary perspective analyses, among other things, the general principles of land use multifunctionality and reports on a variety of success stories.
The dynamic and magnitude of landscape changes have increased since the 18 and 19th centuries and accelerated after the Second World War. As a result, traditional landscapes are vanishing rapidly. In ...this paper, the problems of difficulties in traditional landscape restoration and conservation are discussed, based on studies conducted in the Western Beskids. In this area, the vanishing of the traditional landscape of seasonal mountain economy is observed mainly as a result of land abandonment. The method of historical analysis which draws from varied contemporary and historical data was used. The range of non-forest areas has decreased by more than half since 1848 in two study sites. The traditional landscape is relatively durable in areas that are still utilised by residents or protected using nature conservation activities. Nevertheless, individual landscape elements (terrain forms and objects) are relatively well preserved also in abandoned areas covered with forest. Preserved traces of past human activity are mainly connected with tillage and settlement as past mowing and grazing did not lead to the creation of tough terrain forms. Despite this region's traditional landscape was shaped by seasonal animal grazing and land cultivation, only pastures located in the higher parts of the study area are contemporarily protected. If the current nature conservation in the Western Beskids is continued, only small fragments of the traditional landscape will be preserved as a relic landscape. The study results show that landscape restoration and conservation is still a source of many questions concerning the possibilities, approaches, and effectiveness of these activities. Further studies should focus on assessing the possibility of restoring the historical state of the landscape, which can be the basis for the selection of elements to be protected, spatial range, and methods used. This will allow the development of effective strategies for preserving the traditional landscape.
•The issue of landscape restoration and conservation is a source of many doubts.•Possibility of landscape restoration is crucial for landscape conservation.•Justifying conservation needs as a basis for landscape management.•Reconciliation of many voices is indispensable in landscape management.
Context
Landscape ecology early on developed the awareness that central objects of investigation are not stable over time and therefore the historical dimension must be included, or at least ...considered.
Objectives
This paper considers the importance of history in landscape ecology in terms of its impact on patterns and processes and proposes to complement these with the notion of pathways in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of landscape change.
Methods
We develop a conceptual framework distinguishing between legacy effects, which include pattern and processes, and path dependence, with a focus of development pathways and we illustrate these perspectives by empirical examples.
Results
Combined short- to long-lasting imprints and legacies of historical patterns and processes reveal how present patterns and processes are in various ways influenced by legacies of the past. The focus on inherent dynamics of development pathways sheds light on the process of change itself, and its trajectories, and reveals the role of event chains and institutional reproduction.
Conclusions
Understanding patterns, processes, and pathways over time, allows a more complete analysis of landscape change, and forms the base to preserve vital ecosystem services of both human-made and natural landscapes for the future.
Context
When setting the goal of landscape sustainability in landscape management, a key theoretical question should be which landscape patterns are more sustainable, whereas there were few studies ...that further compared optimization scenarios.
Objectives
This article sought to identify the future scenario of landscape services and the most sustainable landscape in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Methods
This study adopts the parameter of ecological security pattern (ESP) combining with landscape connectivity and landscape service as indicators to assess the sustainability of landscape patterns in 2010, 2020 and 2030 with different land use scenarios in Representative Concentration Pathways.
Results
The results showed that (1) the area with high quality of the three landscape services was mainly concentrated in the southeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, where a large area of forest was distributed, and the low quality area was located in the northwest, which was bare land in 2010; (2) the landscape services showed a declining trend under the RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5 scenarios from 2020 to 2030, whereas the values remained stable under the RCP 6.0 and RCP 8.5 scenarios; and (3) there were 9 ecological sources and 16–17 corridors within the ESP scenarios with quantitative parameters to indicate the landscape sustainability of the scenarios.
Conclusions
The approach of this study showed the possibility of using ESP scenarios to quantitatively indicate the sustainability of landscape patterns and provide guidance for future landscape management.
Paradoxes of green Doherty, Gareth
2017., 20170214, 2017, 2017-02-07
eBook
This innovative multidisciplinary study considers the concept of green from multiple perspectives-aesthetic, architectural, environmental, political, and social-in the Kingdom of Bahrain, where green ...has a long and deep history of appearing cooling, productive, and prosperous-a radical contrast to the hot and hostile desert. Although green is often celebrated in cities as a counter to gray urban environments, green has not always been good for cities. Similarly, manifestation of the color green in arid urban environments is often in direct conflict with the practice of green from an environmental point of view. This paradox is at the heart of the book. In arid environments such as Bahrain, the contradiction becomes extreme and even unsustainable.Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Gareth Doherty explores the landscapes of Bahrain, where green represents a plethora of implicit human values and exists in dialectical tension with other culturally and environmentally significant colors and hues. Explicit in his book is the argument that concepts of color and object are mutually defining and thus a discussion about green becomes a discussion about the creation of space and place.
Holistic and multi-transdisciplinary approaches, where multiple goals are achieved in order to improve resilience in societies and ecosystems in the short, medium, and long term, are ideal, even ...utopian. Hence, science has come together with practical experiences that highlight the importance of working at a ‘landscape’ level. Landscapes, as socio-ecological systems, are key for sustainability and sustainable development, and they represent a realistic unit to interconnect local, national, and ultimately global scales. International efforts regarding holistic natural resources management approaches are not new; however, they are currently pointing to an Integrated Landscape Approach (ILA). Based on a documentation review and analysis, the present article review aims to promote the disambiguation of the ILA concept and provide an updated synthesis knowledge on the ILA. Especially for the forest sector, the ILA has been identified as particularly beneficial, strongly highlighted by the scientific literature, and with an infrastructure of organizations that are encouraging it. The paper presents the rationale of the science behind the concept, as well as the main principles, we identified a variety of definitions with some significant points of overlap, we highlight the inclusion of ILAs in the current international arena and the relationship of ILA’s and Jurisdictional Approaches, and we make a review of the ILA in a challenging world of rapid change. Our review recognizes ILAs socio-ecological management strategy to reconcile conservation, development, climate change, and human well-being goals. ILAs naturally have a social and idealistic construction behind it, which might be just as necessary andsignificant as the journey toward sustainability itself.
In response to the effects of climate change, many countries are realigning their energy systems to the principle of sustainability. An energy system change will lead to the development of ...substantial renewable energy infrastructure (mostly wind and photovoltaic) in landscapes with effects on perceived landscape quality and socio-political acceptance. Both direct perceptive effects of physical landscape structures and latent meanings associated with those structures potentially affect their acceptance.
This work evaluates the role of landscape-technology fit (derived from place-technology fit) representing the extent to which alternatives within each of these two components “fit” together (e.g., does a given type of renewable energy infrastructure fit well within some landscapes but not others?). It also evaluates the role of latent meanings ascribed to landscapes and renewable energy infrastructure within that mentioned “fit” decision as well as the role of prior experience (exposure) to both.
The study is based on a survey of Swiss citizens in a representative online panel (n = 1062). To estimate preferences for diverse renewable energy infrastructure scenarios across landscape types, a discrete choice model was implemented. Meanings ascribed to landscapes and renewable energy infrastructure were included in a second component of the survey. An innovative hybrid choice model approach facilitated integration of latent and observed variables in a hierarchy of predictors.
Results show that most effects were statistically significant. Landscape-technology fit functioned as a moderator between choice attributes and preferences; in turn, it is predicted by landscape and renewable energy meanings, which are predicted by relevant prior experience (exposure).
•Landscape-technology fit (LTF) moderates public preferences across energy scenarios.•Meanings ascribed to landscapes and renewable energy infrastructure predict LTF.•Exposure (landscape, renewable energy infrastructure) predicts ascribed meanings.•Renewable energy in natural landscapes triggers passive place-protective behavior.•The hybrid choice model enhances understanding of landscape transformation preferences.
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