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ABSTRACTS THEME TWO - Antropo-ecology and landscape studies
Current Issues in Landscape Research Landscapes change at an increasing pace and magnitude. Important information and values become lost. The interest for the cultural landscape increased recently and stimulated renewed landscape research, which must be intensified, broadened and integrated. The holistic nature of landscape demands a transdiciplinary approach, which remains difficult to achieve. Multiple views and approaches to the landscape exist and use different concepts, terminology and methods. Landscapes can be studied from different perspectives. The vertical perspective leads to landscape typology and classification resulting in map representation. The horizontal perspective focuses upon the perceptual, mostly visual properties of the landscape scenery. Finally, also the mental representation of the interior landscape is important as it determines largely what we see and value in our environment. Maps offer a powerful graphical representation and allow better communication. However, many difficulties emerge when the complexity and the holistic character of landscape need to be represented. In the scope of this conference, the early work of Granö in this field is significant. Future tasks in landscape research face the integration of the different perspectives and approaches and will need the development of a common language to communicate.
Keywords: landscape science, landscape ecology, regional geography, mapping, visualization.
Over twenty parameters characterising landscape pattern were determined for the UTM 10x10 km cells covering all Estonia and correlated to spread of 30 selected bird species. The landscape parameters include areas of lakes, mires and built areas, length of boarders between different land cover units and length of selected line elements.
The bird species are grouped by correlation into three major groups (a) independent, (b) wetland-preferring (with subgroups avoiding built areas and roads, and independant from that), and (c) built area dependent (with subgroups depending on the importance of line elements).
The paper introduces the atlas of the Environmental Monitoring of Estonia. Atlas on environmental monitoring of Estonia contains thematic maps as well as key facts and statistics on monitoring programmes. The goal is to move beyond descriptive mapping towards analytical mapping to achieve integrated approach to environmental management. Implementation and enforcement of European Community Directives requires elaboration monitoring programme, follow-up investigations and surveys, including network planning by spatial analysis. Indicator mapping gives the efficient output for the dissemination.
This paper aims to provide rough guidelines of pursuing a phenomenological study of places as situated in landscape and as consisting of landscape features. Paper includes an introduction to the conceptual relationships of place and landscape and an overview of phenomenological method and its role in geography and in place studies. In this paper it is suggested that instead of rejecting phenomenological method as was done in 1970s it should have a central role in geographical studies concerned with the fundamental aspects of relationship between humans and their environment.
Keywords: place, landscape, phenomenology, methodology
Danish heathlands were created during Neolithicum as an effect of utilisation. After clearance by fire, the former forest areas were used for grazing/browsing and for shifting cultivation almost continuously from about 1500 BC. Relatively little detail is known about landuse in the heathland areas during Middle Ages. Even from the first Danish land register 1688 and from the protocols of the enclosure (1790s) little is revealed on the practices concerning the heathlands. The finding of a diary, covering the period 1829-1857, written meticulously by a certain Peder Knudsen in Stavlund, has given sufficient detail for a reliable reconstruction of the contemporary use of heathlands. The main strategy of the farming was application of the traditional principle: 'meadow fattens acre'. By this - a special edition of the 'coupled infield-outfield system' - plant nutrition was transferred from the meadow to the field by means of stall-fed cattle. An auxiliary strategy was the use of heather and turves as a kind of napkin, absorbing dung (solid and liquid). This served to avoid losses of plant nutrients and at the same time furthered bio-chemical breakdown of the woody material, both of the cowshed-litter and of additional heath-turves in the farm-yard midden. The effects on the heathland from the use of heather for soil improvement are shown to be more significant than the competing uses for browsing, for ash-fertiliser etc. One of the reasons for this is that such uses required heather of relatively old age. It is estimated that about half of the total annual production of biomass on the heathland belonging to the farm was harvested each year.
Possibly a big part of the rest was lost by occasional wild-fires. In modern nature conservancy the old practices including burning, peeling of turves, cutting of shoots and browsing must be considered to preserve heathlands in their original appearance.
The report analyses changes in landscape structure on the Vidzeme Upland during the 20th century and the expected changes in the 21th century. Forest areas gradually increased on the Vidzeme Upland in the 20th century. This is associated with economic policy in Latvia during the 1930s, exile of farmers in 1940 and 1949 after occupation of Latvia, aggregation of farm land in collective farms, liquidation of small collective farms, formation of large-scale Soviet farms, and wide-scale land melioration.
After land reform in the 1990s, when land-ownership was renewed, much of the land on the Vidzeme Upland was abandoned or was used non-intensively. As a result of landscape succession, by gradual overgrowing of agricultural land, the landscape structure changed. Initially, increased landscape heterogeneity was observed, which may later change to a homogenous landscape pattern. The report analyses the current social-economic state on the upland and its impact on landscape structure.
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