Projects / Programmes
Sustainable landscape management: From science to action
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 4.03.08 |
Biotechnical sciences |
Plant production |
Economics of agro-food processing and rural development |
| 6.12.00 |
Humanities |
Geography |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| B000 |
Biomedical sciences |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 4.01 |
Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences |
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries |
| 5.07 |
Social Sciences |
Social and economic geography |
land use changes, ecosystem services, sustainable landscape management, optimization of spatial patterns, landscape scenarios, Slovenia
Researchers (1)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
To meet growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel, humans have changed landscapes, over the last century, more rapidly and extensively than in any other time in human history. Land use changes have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development. However, these gains have been achieved at a high cost in the terms of loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) and can produce multiple undesirable social impacts (Meyfroidt et al., 2018). In Europe two major trends of land use changes can be identified: 1) those resulting from agriculture marginalization, abandonment of earlier agricultural and forestry practices, and consequently land abandonment, and 2) those arising from more intensive use of the land, and more specialized farming and forestry on a larger scale (Fry, Gustavsson, 1996). Both changes bring challenges to sustainable landscape management.
Even though many studies defend that the landscape is the pivotal scale for the study and practice of sustainability, case studies on the importance of landscape ecology towards sustainability and to policy making have shown gaps: 1) Ecosystem services are still unknown in practice or not yet perceived by the wider public as applicable for decision making; 2) Evaluating decision alternatives at landscape scale is still challenging; and, 3) The real impact of land use changes to sustainable landscape management is still limited (de Groot et al. 2010). Thus the main objective of this research project is to make landscape management operational and useful in the context of policy making for sustainable development. Due to its great landscape diversity and landscape vulnerability to human activities, Slovenia appears to be a good »laboratory« for this research. This placed-based research project attempts to provide key content knowledge to bridge the science and the practice and enhancement of sustainable development, exploring case studies represented by Slovenian landscapes going through different transformations.
The overall procedure of the methodology includes a 3-phase approach. Within the Phase 1 the structural and shape analysis of the landscape components, the quantification of the changes over time, and ecosystem services assessment will be done in order to understand trends and changes that provide the major directions for this century. These analyses will allow the identification of functional shortcomings of today’s landscapes towards sustainability. Based on data from Phase 1 and data on development processes, the creation of landscape scenarios will be done in Phase 2 through exploratory and normative scenarios. Exploratory scenarios will be done by expert driven processes aiming to obtain future plausible scenarios. With participatory methods in order to co-design landscape desire scenarios we will find the optimization of spatial patterns of different landscape types taking into account the needs, perceptions and ability of stakeholders. Then, a comparison between the today’s landscapes to the sustainable landscape scenario will be done to evaluate the degree of sustainability that could be achieved in the selected landscapes. The Phase 3 aims the creation of sustainable landscape management strategies for the landscapes selected by means of negotiations; this will enable transformations towards the implementation of sustainable solutions.
The expected results will help to identify new approaches for sustainable landscape development management (e.g. sustainable agriculture development) and to increase the visibility of landscape-based research to sustainability science and policy making. The results will be communicated to entities responsible for landscape management, as well as to policy makers involved in regional development, and will be disseminated at national and international conferences and through scientific papers.
Significance for science
This research is contributing to closing the gaps from previous case studies on the importance of landscape ecology to sustainability science and policy making, by closing the gap between theory and application. With this, the project is expected to demonstrate how pattern-process dynamics interact with societal processes, to deliver collaborative decisions by local stakeholder groups, and to impact the scientific knowledge on local landscape policy and land use changes. In terms of scientific excellence and impact, this research can help to identify new approaches for sustainable landscape development management (e.g. sustainable agriculture development) and to increase the visibility of landscape-based research to sustainability science and policy making. The results from this project will be disseminated at national and international conferences dealing with this thematic and will be communicated through publications in scientific journals.
This project could also be important for those entities responsible for landscape management as well as for policy makers involved in regional development, and we will make efforts to communicate results to these constituencies. The results could serve as directions to the future European Common Agriculture Policy and Rural Development Regulation, as well as to raise awareness among national and European policy makers of the fact that landscape management and development are intertwined. The project will contribute to EU Action Plan for nature, people and the economy by integrating ES into decision-making; and to improvement of the European Landscape Convention and its application in Slovenia. In addition, results will support a better coordination between agricultural, environmental and cohesion policies, and will support the formation of alliances with local authorities and civil society in the management of landscape change in order to support sustainable solutions.
Significance for the country
This research is contributing to closing the gaps from previous case studies on the importance of landscape ecology to sustainability science and policy making, by closing the gap between theory and application. With this, the project is expected to demonstrate how pattern-process dynamics interact with societal processes, to deliver collaborative decisions by local stakeholder groups, and to impact the scientific knowledge on local landscape policy and land use changes. In terms of scientific excellence and impact, this research can help to identify new approaches for sustainable landscape development management (e.g. sustainable agriculture development) and to increase the visibility of landscape-based research to sustainability science and policy making. The results from this project will be disseminated at national and international conferences dealing with this thematic and will be communicated through publications in scientific journals.
This project could also be important for those entities responsible for landscape management as well as for policy makers involved in regional development, and we will make efforts to communicate results to these constituencies. The results could serve as directions to the future European Common Agriculture Policy and Rural Development Regulation, as well as to raise awareness among national and European policy makers of the fact that landscape management and development are intertwined. The project will contribute to EU Action Plan for nature, people and the economy by integrating ES into decision-making; and to improvement of the European Landscape Convention and its application in Slovenia. In addition, results will support a better coordination between agricultural, environmental and cohesion policies, and will support the formation of alliances with local authorities and civil society in the management of landscape change in order to support sustainable solutions.
