Dynamic and Diverse Conservation Approaches for an Historical Irrigation System: A Cultural Landscape in Taiwan

Abstract

An historical irrigation landscape with its irrigation facilities, water engineering works, and irrigated farms, could be considered a cultural landscape that records the process of interactions between the people and land, and the resulting influences on the environment. Dynamic and diverse conservation approaches may be applied in a cultural landscape, due to various features, characters and values of the elements within it. Using the strategy of sustainability, concepts of preservation of historical testimonies and maintenance of the operational and integral instruments, a cultural landscape may be conserved through the approaches of monument-based conservation, operation-based conservation, sustainable management and planning. The Jianan Irrigation System, an historical irrigation cultural landscape in southern Taiwan, is illustrated to describe these arguments.