Rural Landscape Management Research Articles

Farming dynamics and social capital: A case study in the urban fringe of Mexico City

Urban development has important implications for farmland preservation and natural resource management in local peri-urban communities. Social science research on recent changes in rural landscape of mega-cities tends to be limited to case studies in Latin-American nations. This study analyses the socioecomic dynamics of farming land use and the interactions between multiple cultural variables and the environment. Fieldwork was carried out during the 2002–2003 period in rural livelihoods of the five high mountain towns of south Mexico City. Data obtained from participatory survey and ethnographic techniques were integrated to assess changes in rural landscape and resource management and how urbanization, deforestation and market oriented agricultural production result in different livelihoods within a similar urban fringe context. The dynamic of mixture of urban and rural landscapes is based on farm productivity and social capital factors. The study concludes that policy support for regional agricultural production systems through enhancing ecosystems services, environmental protection and economic development is needed for sustainable development of local communities.

Bridging the Gap between Centrally Defined Policies and Local Decisions – Towards more Sensitive and Creative Rural Landscape Management

European policies and instruments such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and many instruments for nature and landscape conservation in Europe have for some decades been dominated by centralisation and standardisation. This paper shows that this has led to the neglect of contextual and place-related approaches and an unnecessarily high degree of over-simplification. Recently, as a reaction to this over-simplification, diversity and specific character has been particularly stressed in many European and national strategies for rural landscapes and conservation, but the processes of simplification still continue. Using examples from mixed agriculture and forestry landscapes in Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden, this paper aims to contribute to understanding the gap between centrally defined strategies for rural landscapes and awareness and management practices at local level. The three countries are situated at the outer fringes of Europe, and are complementary with their different degrees of urbanisation, forest distribution and tree-richness in the agricultural landscapes. Furthermore, the aim is to show how local landscape management is driven and to identify factors contributing to a better use of public policies through a participatory process with visions for the future. Systems of landscape classifications such as landscape character assessment often recognise the specific character of these landscapes, but have so far achieved very little for the preservation of their locally specific values, nor have they contributed to the development and the creation of new visions for future management. Such systems could contribute much more if they could be opened to adaptation on a more local scale in communication-led management planning.

Sustainable management of rural landscapes: application of new routines implemented on GIS for modelling visual relationships

The purpose of this paper was to introduce a spatial decision support system (SDSS) for site selection of new buildings in rural landscapes. It is based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This process consists of a twostage methodology: namely, land suitability mapping, followed by visual interpretation of potential sites. The SDSS is part of integrated computer software which can perform both functions, being specifically developed for this purpose and registered as GISCAD 2.0. This is a programme created in ARC/INFO Macro Language (AML) programming language. This is the means to generate macros and routines in ARC/INFO versions 7 and 8 for the consecutive execution of linked commands. As regards the computer routines, they are more than a mere concatenation of orders to be carried out successively by ARC/INFO. Some of them, such as COMPOSITION.AML, BACKGROUND.AML, CAPACITY.AML, SETTLE.AML and INTEGRATION.AML, are actually a logical analysis system which provides GISCAD 2.0 with a decision-making capacity according to the information supplied. At present these routines are being worked into a fully efficient system incorporating the ability to learn from the decisions taken, and for this information to form part of the initial data for the following calculation cycle.

The Weedy West: Mobile Nature, Boundaries, and Common Space in the Montana Landscape

The movement of weeds across human boundaries, and collective responses to that movement, created a common geographic space in which people adjusted parceled land to the exigencies of transboundary ecology. Examining the weed commons in Montana illuminates a shift in the 1930s toward the cooperative management of rural western landscape.

:Landscape and History since 1500

In recent years there has been increasing interest in, and concern for, many aspects of landscape within British, European and wider contexts. This has included the study of the history, development and the change in our perceptions of landscape, as well as research into the links between past landscapes and political ideologies, economic and social structures, cartography, art and literature. There is also considerable concern at present with the need to evaluate and classify historic landscapes, and to develop policies for their conservation and management in relation to their scenic, heritage and recreational value. This is manifest not only in the designation of particularly valued areas with enhanced protection from planning developments, such as national parks and world heritage sites, but in the countryside more generally. Changes in European Union policies relating to agriculture, with a greater concern for the protection and sustainable management of rural landscapes are likely to be of major importance in relation to the themes of continuity and change in the landscapes of Britain and Europe. Landscape and History explores the relationship between landscape and history over the past five centuries. The book is interdisciplinary and broad in scope, drawing on material from social, economic and cultural history, geography, archaeology, cultural geography, planning and landscape history.

Assessment and modelling of the influence of man-made networks on the hydrology of a small watershed: implications for fast flow components, water quality and landscape management

Up to now, most watershed models have been focused on the representation of ‘natural’ flow and transport processes. In this paper, we discuss the role of man-made networks, such as ditches, roads, hedge rows and hedges, underground drainage by buried pipes, etc. The influence of such features on the hydrology of a watershed may be of particular importance if the aim of the modelling is to predict the effect of landscape management or the fate of contaminants, e.g. pesticides, when a rain event occurs very soon after their spreading on the soil surface. It is likely that such artificial networks may act as conduits or short-circuits for the transport of contaminants, either dissolved or sorbed on soil particles, by-passing some of the retardation mechanisms such as sorption in the soil, retention of surface runoff by grass verges, biodegradation in the unsaturated zone, etc. We first present a small watershed on which the study was conducted, the Kervidy, which is a 5 km 2 ‘bocage 2 2 Bocage is a landscape with grassland, hedges, and occasional trees—often apple trees—typical of Brittany and Normandy. ’ catchment in Brittany, France. The man-made networks were observed and their extent and functioning described. We then included the potential hydraulic role of these networks in a distributed watershed model (TOPOG, [J. Hydrol. 150 (1993) 665]). This modified model, ANTHROPOG, was run, for comparison, with and without the man-made network; sensitivity tests were also made to assess the hydrologic importance of these networks. It was shown that they can have a very significant effect on the functioning of a watershed. We conclude on the relevance of the improved distributed model for the management of rural landscapes, and on the type of additional data needed to calibrate the model with parameters representative of the true processes.

Preferences for Residential Development Attributes and Support for the Policy Process: Implications for Management and Conservation of Rural Landscapes

The rural public may not only be concerned with the consequences of land management; residents may also have systematic preferences for policy instruments applied to management goals. Preferences for outcomes do not necessarily imply matching support for the underlying policy process. This study assesses relationships among support for elements of the policy process and preferences for management outcomes. Preferences are examined within the context of alternative proposals to manage growth and conserve landscape attributes in southern New England. Results are based on (a) stated preferences estimated from a multi-attribute contingent choice survey of rural residents, and (b) Likert-scale assessment of strength of support for land use policy tools. Findings indicate general but not universal correlation among policy support indicators and preferences for associated land use outcomes, but also confirm the suspicion that policy support and land use preference may not always coincide.

Conserving English Landscapes: Land Managers and Agri-Environmental Policy

There is increasing public policy interest in the management of rural landscapes for conservation, both in terms of natural and cultural heritage. Agri-environmental policies are an important part of an emerging vision for a sustainable countryside, with increasing support for the existing Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) and Countryside Stewardship (CS) schemes. This paper provides insight into the nature of land-manager attitudes towards the conservation of rural landscapes and how these relate to differing modes and levels of engagement with these two schemes. It is based on the results of a recently completed project exploring the attitudes and practices of 100 land managers towards features of landscape and historic interest. Agri-environmental research has often sought to ‘typologise’ attitudes and practices around discrete land-manager types; an approach that may downgrade commonalities between land managers, the potential interplay of elements defining these types, and the possibility that land-manager identities may not be uniform. In this paper, in contrast, we emphasise the significance of these three analytical issues surrounding land-manager attitudes and practices. We explore land managers' interest and investment in conservation and go on to explain how these concerns were often closely related to the wildlife, historic and aesthetic goals of the schemes. The analysis then considers in detail how a concern for conservation often came to interplay with economic concerns to produce different attitudes and practices. We term these ‘styles of participation and nonparticipation’ to emphasise that such modes of uptake are not necessarily associated with specific land-manager types. Land managers developed these attitudes and practices with respect to different parts of their farms, types of landscape feature, and scheme in question. We conclude by emphasising the importance of contextualised analyses of land-manager values, knowledges, and practices for exploring the nature and possibilities of a ‘sustainable countryside', and the role of agri-environmental policy within this policy vision of rural areas.

Farmers’ involvement in landscape activities: An analysis of the relationship between farm location, farm characteristics and landscape changes in two study areas in Jutland, Denmark

Farmers are important agents in rural landscape management as they modify landscape elements to suit their needs. The purpose of this study is to investigate if patterns of landscape activities undertaken by farmers are related to certain farm characteristics and if landscape activities vary from one location to another. With this purpose, we investigated the differences between the level of farmers’ involvement in landscape activities in two study areas in central Jutland, Denmark. Particular attention was given to the analysis of the type and extent of landscape activities and their relationship with farm characteristics. In both study areas, landscape activities leading to a more extensive type of land use predominate. However, a multivariate analysis implemented on the set of landscape activity data reveals significant differences between the two study areas. Hedgerow planting and removal is more common in Sønder Omme, while pond digging and cultivation of permanent grass lands are characteristic activities in Gadbjerg-Givskud. Moreover, the proportion of farmers involved and the area affected by different landscape activities is larger in Sønder Omme than in Gadbjerg-Givskud. The farms of the two areas are different in terms of production type, size and socio-economic characteristics. These characteristics represent significant relationships with landscape activities. However, they are not sufficient to explain the differences between landscape activities undertaken in the two areas. The differences are caused by unique cultural and biophysical environment, which influence and modify the relationship between farm characteristics and landscape activities in a distinct manner for each study area.

Landscape analysis in areas affected by land consolidation

Over the past few decades, technological progress has greatly increased the “human landscape” at the expense of the natural environment. The result is that the landscape is losing its biological and cultural richness. The area where it is possible to reduce the consequences of human activity on natural ecosystems is the rural landscape. This study was carried out on the northern Italian plain, where the landscape structure has been influenced in some parts by land consolidation works over the years. The purpose was to determine which variables can describe changes in landscape structure and the way these can be handled, by the calculation of several indices and the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology. The analysis of landscape change on different spatial and temporal scales and the comparison of trends in landscape change allowed the effect of land consolidation to be studied. Variation in landscape diversity was strongly related to the development of man-made patches, and it increased in areas uninfluenced by land consolidation. Therefore, the other landscape units have lost diversity as a consequence of their change to agricultural production. A combination of indices showed a trend towards impoverishment, and this was surveyed both in areas affected by landscape consolidation and in areas unaffected by it. Different trends in landscape structure were surveyed in the areas under investigation, and this meant that landscape development was not exclusively connected to works associated with land improvement, but was the result of rural landscape management. It was also found that the greatest change occurred as a consequence of increasing human activity in semi-natural patches which are ecological stabilisers. The increasing separation of semi-natural and human landscapes is therefore inevitable.