Resilience and the Cultural Landscape: Understanding and Managing Change in Human-Shaped Environments

All over the world, efforts are being made to preserve landscapes facing fundamental change as a consequence of widespread agricultural intensification, land abandonment and urbanization. The 'cultural landscape' and 'resilience' approaches have, until now, largely been viewed as distinct methods for understanding the effects of these dynamics and the ways in which they might be adapted or managed. This book brings together these two perspectives, providing new insights into the social-ecological resilience of cultural landscapes by coming to terms with, and challenging, the concepts of 'driving forces', 'thresholds', 'adaptive cycles' and 'adaptive management'. By linking these research communities, this book develops a new perspective on landscape changes. Based on firm conceptual contributions and rich case studies from Europe, the Americas and Australia, it will appeal to anyone interested in analyzing and managing change in human-shaped environments in the context of sustainability.

Tobias Plieninger is Associate Professor in Countryside Planning at the University of Copenhagen. He is an environmental scientist with a commitment to inter- and transdisciplinary landscape research. He has researched and published extensively on the driving forces, processes and impacts of change in European cultural landscapes at various spatial and temporal scales.

Claudia Bieling is a landscape researcher at the Institute for Landscape Management at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Focusing on the mutual relations between people and place, she investigates land use and its various meanings for small-scale landowners and society. Her work particularly addresses landscape perceptions, immaterial benefits provided by landscapes ('cultural ecosystem services') and nature and heritage preservation in the context of private land use. She has studied these topics in an array of interdisciplinary projects on different land use forms, ranging from livestock husbandry and viticulture to forestry practices, and in different European regions.