Use of Digital Technology in Mapping Rural Cultural Landscapes and their Human-Nature Interactions

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the development of digital technologies has provided great opportunities for the conservation and management of cultural landscapes. This chapter presents an innovative approach adopting a cultural landscape framework with the support of digital technologies to capture the spatial patterns of rural cultural landscapes. This approach was explored through the case study of traditional rural landscapes in southwestern China. Aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry and laser scanning technologies were integrated to collect and process spatial information at different scales. The digital models and maps were generated from survey data to represent the spatial patterns of these villages and provide an informative interpretation of the human-nature interactions. The digital survey tools can accurately capture both the site context and building details comparable in accuracy to manual measurement technologies, and at a greatly increased level of efficiency and scope. The digital mapping workflow and corresponding technical parameter systems could be applied as references for other types of cultural landscapes in China and the Asia-Pacific. Using this new approach, many more disappearing cultural landscapes could have their spatial patterns and qualities recorded. This would capture landscape information perhaps otherwise lost and provide valuable material for heritage research, education, and practice.