•Human health is underrepresented in ecosystem services frameworks.•Health has a potential to connect people in landscape approaches.•The positive health concept provides a proper ground for health ...indicators.•Landscape naturalness was found to be related to positive health dimensions.•A way forward to include health in collaborative landscape approaches is proposed.
Landscape services have been found to foster collaboration among actors in social-ecological transitions towards a more sustainable landscape. In this essay I propose that the contribution of landscape to human health could be particularly effective to play such a role. Health is important to most people in society, to business and government, and of economic and social value. Urban green space is widely known to have a positive impact on human health, but outside the urban landscape this effect is much less known. However, human health is underrepresented in frameworks of ecosystems services and applications of landscape services.
I explore how health could be incorporated into landscape approaches beyond the urban fringe. For the application in landscape approaches, it is vital that the relationship between landscape and human health is expressed in parameters that are recognized as meaningful by the various actor groups. As a health specification, I propose the concept of positive health, because it is based on well-being and subjective perceptions of health. To characterize the physical assets of landscape that associate with health, perceived landscape naturalness seems a promising concept to explore further. I offer examples of studies illustrating the relationship between landscape naturalness and 5 dimensions of positive health. I conclude with suggesting research priorities to develop a knowledge base for integrating human health in collaborative landscape adaptation.
Landscape ecology is in a position to become the scientific basis for sustainable landscape development. When spatial planning policy is decentralised, local actors need to collaborate to decide on ...the changes that have to be made in the landscape to better accommodate their perceptions of value. This paper addresses two prerequisites that landscape ecological science has to meet for it to be effective in producing appropriate knowledge for such bottom-up landscape-development processes--it must include a valuation component, and it must be suitable for use in collaborative decision-making on a local scale. We argue that landscape ecological research needs to focus more on these issues and propose the concept of landscape services as a unifying common ground where scientists from various disciplines are encouraged to cooperate in producing a common knowledge base that can be integrated into multifunctional, actor-led landscape development. We elaborate this concept into a knowledge framework, the structure-function-value chain, and expand the current pattern-process paradigm in landscape ecology with value in this way. Subsequently, we analyse how the framework could be applied and facilitate interdisciplinary research that is applicable in transdisciplinary landscape-development processes.
Given the major changes that rural areas have undergone, and are continuing to undergo, serious problems of achieving sustainable development are being experienced. These changes have multiple ...characters, varying from changes in ecosystem conditions to changes in socio-economic impacts, due to, for example, food- and financial crises. Nowadays, there is an increasing awareness of the need to develop rural policies that support adaptive strategies of stakeholders in response to a disturbance. We propose that resilience thinking offers a framework that could be helpful in the governance of rural changes. This framework is based on the complexity of the social–ecological system and takes into account the unpredictable future, as it emphasizes adaptive approaches to management. As such, it helps evaluate to what extent rural development policies contribute to the resilience of rural areas. Nine criteria were developed including thirteen specifications. In order to evaluate the usability and usefulness of the proposed framework, a case study has been performed that specifically investigated the degree of resilience of a European rural development policy (i.e. the spending of extra funds generated through compulsory modulation under the 2009 Health Check in the Netherlands).
► We examine the key attributes of resilience development for rural areas. ► We propose a resilience-based policy objectives evaluation framework. ► A rural policy evaluation framework based on resilience is not proposed before.
Landscape Approaches: A State-of-the-Art Review Arts, Bas; Buizer, Marleen; Horlings, Lumina ...
Annual review of environment and resources,
10/2017, Letnik:
42, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Landscape approaches have become
en vogue
in the past couple of decades. Originating from nineteenth-century landscape geography, this renewed popularity since the 1980s is fueled by debates on-among ...others-nature conservation, landscape restoration, ecosystem services, competing claims on land and resources, sectorial land-use policies, sustainable development, and sense of place. This review illuminates the ambition and potential of these landscape approaches for interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration. To show this, we work with a T-shaped interdisciplinary model. After a short history of the landscape approaches, we dive into their key dimensions-from ecology to economics and culture to politics. Thereafter, we bring these dimensions together again and reflect on the integrative potential of landscape approaches for offering common ground to various disciplines and sectors. Two examples of applications are also dealt with: a landscape governance framework and a landscape capability framework.
In protected areas managers have to achieve conservation targets while providing opportunities for outdoor recreation. This dual mandate causes conflicts in choosing between management options. ...Furthermore, the persistence of a protected species within the management unit often depends on how conservation areas elsewhere in the region are managed. We present an assessment procedure to guide groups of managers in aligning outdoor recreation and bird conservation targets for a regional scale protected area in the Netherlands. We used existing bird monitoring data and simulated visitor densities to statistically model the impact of outdoor recreation on bird densities. The models were used to extrapolate the local impacts for other parts of the area, but also to assess the impact on conservation targets at the regional level that were determined by the national government. The assessment shows impacts of outdoor recreation on Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus), Stonechat (Saxicola torquata) and Woodlark (Lullula arborea), reducing the regional population by up to 28 percent. The Woodlark population size was reduced below the level of the politically determined conservation target. The output of the regression models provides information that connects implications of local management to regional scale conservation targets. The spatial maps of bird densities can help in deciding where reducing visitor disturbance is expected to result in increasing bird populations, or where alternative measures, such as improving the habitat conditions, could be effective. We suggest that by using our assessment procedure collaborative decision making is facilitated.
Display omitted
•Visitor impact on breeding birds estimated by using monitoring data and models.•Population reduction up to 28%, below politically determined conservation target.•The results help managers to relate local impact to regional conservation targets.•Maps inform manager networks where reduction of visitor densities is most effective.
Context
In Europe, policy measures are starting to emerge that promote multifunctional farming systems and delivery of ecosystem services besides food production. Effectiveness of these policy ...instruments have to deal with ecological, economic and social complexities and with complexities in individual decisions of local actors leading to system shifts.
Objective
The objective of this paper is to discover the most important social and/or economic drivers that cause farm systems to shift between a monofunctional (providing food) and a multifunctional state (providing food and natural pest regulation).
Methods
Using a cellular automata model, we simulated decisions of individual farmers to shift between a mono-and multifunctional state through time, based on their behaviour type and on financial and social consequences. Collaboration of multifunctional farmers at a landscape scale is a precondition to provide a reliable level of natural pest regulation.
Results
Costs of applying green infrastructure was an important driver for the size and the conversion rate of shifts between mono-and multifunctional farming systems. Shifts towards multifunctional farming were enhanced by a higher motivation of farmers to produce sustainably, while shifts (back) to a monofunctional state was enhanced by a low social cohesion between multifunctional farmers.
Conclusions
These results suggest that in order to develop a multifunctional farming system, individual farmers should act counterintuitively to their conventional farming environment. To maintain a multifunctional farming system, social cohesion between multifunctional farmers is most relevant. Financial aspects are important in both shifts.
There is growing evidence that climate change causes an increase in variation in conditions for plant and animal populations. This increase in variation, e.g. amplified inter-annual variability in ...temperature and rainfall has population dynamical consequences because it raises the variation in vital demographic rates (survival, reproduction) in these populations. In turn, this amplified environmental variability enlarges population extinction risk. This paper demonstrates that currently used nature conservation policies, principles, and generic and specific design criteria have to be adapted to these new insights. A simulation shows that an increase in variation in vital demographic rates can be compensated for by increasing patch size. A small, short-lived bird species like a warbler that is highly sensitive to environmental fluctuations needs more area for compensation than a large, long-lived bird species like a Bittern. We explore the conservation problems that would arise if patches or reserve sizes would need to be increased, e.g. doubled, in order to compensate for increase in environmental variability. This issue has serious consequences for nature policy when targets are not met, and asks for new design criteria.
For landscape ecology to produce knowledge relevant to society, it must include considerations of human culture and behavior, extending beyond the natural sciences to synthesize with many other ...disciplines. Furthermore, it needs to be able to support landscape change processes which increasingly take the shape of deliberative and collaborative decision making by local stakeholder groups. Landscape ecology as described by Wu (Landscape Ecol 28:1–11,
2013
) therefore needs three additional topics of investigation: (1) the local landscape as a boundary object that builds communication among disciplines and between science and local communities, (2) iterative and collaborative methods for generating transdisciplinary approaches to sustainable change, and (3) the effect of scientific knowledge and tools on local landscape policy and landscape change. Collectively, these topics could empower landscape ecology to be a science for action at the local scale.
In this paper, we propose the ecological network concept as a suitable basis for inserting biodiversity conservation into sustainable landscape development. For landscapes to be ecologically ...sustainable, the landscape structure should support those ecological processes required for the landscape to deliver biodiversity services for present and future generations. We first show that in multifunctional, human-dominated landscapes, biodiversity conservation needs a coherent large-scale spatial structure of ecosystems. Theory and empirical knowledge of ecological networks provides a framework for the design of such structures. Secondly, ecological networks can bridge the paradox between reserve conservation (fixing nature in space and time) and development, which implies change. This is because ecological networks can change structure without losing their conservation potential. Thirdly, ecological networks facilitate stakeholder decision-making on feasible biodiversity goals. They help to focus on an effective spatial scale. We conclude that extending the ecological network concept with multifunctional indicators is a promising step towards sustainable landscape development and stakeholder decision-making.
Context
Transitions to more sustainable landscapes require that actors change their thinking about using the landscape and act collectively to implement a shared view on the future. If landscape ...ecologists want their knowledge to contribute to such transitions, the information they provide need to stimulate collective decisions and action.
Objective
To identify key factors that determine how scientific information about landscape functioning and benefits influences actors in organizing collective action for landscape sustainability.
Method
I combine a theory of knowledge management with a theory of behavioural change to construct a framework of 4 phases of interpretation and implementation of landscape information.
Results
The 4 phases are: (1) actors accept the information as significant, (2) actors assess the saliency of the information for their case, (3) the information stimulates social network building and collective action, and (4) the information enforces the capacity to organize collaborative change. The extent to which these phases effectively develop in the interaction between scientists and practitioners depends on characteristics of the information, but to a great deal also on the process of interaction and the roles scientist play. I discuss how landscape ecologists can intervene in these phases, by providing the right information and by facilitating an interactive process of knowledge generation.
Conclusions
Whether landscape information is eventually used in organizing the landscape change depends on characteristics of the information and the governance process in which the information is brought in. Knowledge from social sciences is indispensable for landscape ecology with impact.
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