Sustaining ecosystem services in cultural landscapes

Bibliographic Data

ID4240712
AuthorsTobias Plieninger (0000-0003-1478-2587, University of Copenhagen), Dan Van Der Horst (0000-0002-9454-9664), Christian Schleyer (0000-0002-9604-1653), Claudia Bieling (0000-0001-5001-4150, TU Bergakademie Freiberg)
Year2014
Volume19
Issue2
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueConservation Ecology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1195-5449 • E-ISSN: 1708-3087
PublisherResilience Alliance (PUBLISHER • CA)
DOI10.5751/es-06159-190259
OpenAlexW2104742036
LanguageEN
Citations received51
References cited23

Classical conservation approaches focus on the man-made degradation of ecosystems and tend to neglect the socialecological values that human land uses have imprinted on many environments. Throughout the world, ingenious land-use practices have generated unique cultural landscapes, but these are under pressure from agricultural intensification, land abandonment, and urbanization. In recent years, the cultural landscapes concept has been broadly adopted in science, policy, and management. The interest in both outstanding and vernacular landscapes finds expression in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, the European Landscape Convention, and the IUCN Protected Landscape Approach. These policies promote the protection, management, planning, and governance of cultural landscapes. The ecosystem services approach is a powerful framework to guide such efforts, but has rarely been applied in landscape research and management. With this paper, we introduce a special feature that aims to enhance the theoretical, empirical and practical knowledge of how to safeguard the resilience of ecosystem services in cultural landscapes. It concludes (1) that the usefulness of the ecosystem services approach to the analysis and management of cultural landscapes should be reviewed more critically; (2) that conventional ecosystem services assessment needs to be complemented by socio-cultural valuation; (3) that cultural landscapes are inherently changing, so that a dynamic view on ecosystem services and a focus on drivers of landscape change are needed; and (4) that managing landscapes for ecosystem services provision may benefit from a social-ecological resilience perspective

Biology · Business · Ecosystem · Ecosystem services · Environmental planning · Environmental resource management · Geography · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Environmental Science · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · Urban Agriculture and Sustainability · Ecology

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