Improving the factual knowledge of landscapes: Following up the European Landscape Convention with a comparative historical analysis of forces of landscape change in the Sjodalen and Stølsheimen mountain areas, Norway

Abstract

A focus of implementing the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in Norway is on improving the factual knowledge of landscapes, which implies analysing the forces transforming them. The article aims to identify important forces of change and to elucidate its complexity by a comparative historical study of land cover and land use in two mountain areas in Western and Eastern Norway. The land covers and uses in focus are transport infrastructure, seasonal farming, vegetation, tourism and outdoor recreation, and nature and landscape protection. Based on an understanding of forces as something being exerted, a framework including pressure, attraction, friction, repulsion, and working force is developed. A comprehensive literature analysis shows how differences in intensity and extent of land use and development of land cover result from a complex interaction of common extrinsic forces with locally different intrinsic forces. To control landscape change and to maintain diversity among landscapes as a Europe-wide resource, the national implementation of the ELC will require a strong focus on the local level. Moreover, understanding the ELC as an origin of forces is recommended, because it allows more appropriate individual responses to landscape change.