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Landscape

A landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including natural elements such as landforms, vegetation, soils, and water bodies, alongside human-altered components like buildings, roads, and agricultural fields.^[1]^[2] The term originates from the Dutch landschap, denoting a region or tract of land, entering English usage around 1600 to describe both actual terrain and pictorial representations thereof.^[3] In geographical and ecological contexts, landscapes are defined as heterogeneous spatial units where patterns of structure interact with processes like disturbance, migration, and resource flow, influencing biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics across scales.^[4]^[5] Landscapes vary from untouched biomes like tundra or rainforest to culturally shaped terrains such as terraced fields or urban parks, each reflecting the interplay of geological history, climate, and human activity.^[6] Empirical studies emphasize their role in sustaining ecological functions, with spatial heterogeneity driving processes like habitat connectivity and species dispersal.^[7] Defining characteristics include patch dynamics—discrete areas of uniform cover—and corridors that facilitate movement, both critical for resilience against environmental changes.^[8] In environmental science, landscape analysis prioritizes causal mechanisms, such as how topography affects water flow and soil erosion, over simplistic narratives, revealing how human interventions can enhance or degrade natural patterns.^[9]^[10]

Definition and Conceptual Foundations

Etymology and Historical Development

The English word "landscape" derives from the Dutch "landschap," meaning a region or tract of land, combining "land" and the suffix "-schap" equivalent to English "-ship."^[11] This term entered English around 1598–1600, initially as a painters' designation for depictions of natural scenery, reflecting its origins in the visual arts rather than geographical description.^[3] Earlier, Old English used "landsċipe" to denote a shaped tract of land, often agricultural, but the word fell into disuse until reintroduced via Dutch influence during the Renaissance.^[12] Historically, the concept of landscape crystallized in the 16th and 17th centuries through Dutch and Flemish art, where "landschap" described paintings prioritizing expansive views of terrain, sky, and vegetation over human figures, marking a shift from symbolic to observational representation.^[13] This artistic emergence paralleled the Dutch Golden Age's emphasis on empirical depiction of familiar environments, influencing European traditions; by the 1660s, English usage extended to actual scenery viewed pictorially.^[3] In geography, the term was adopted in the 18th–19th centuries to describe visible earth features shaped by geological and biological processes, evolving from aesthetic to analytical frameworks with contributions from figures like Alexander von Humboldt, who integrated landscape observation into systematic natural history by 1807.^[14] By the early 20th century, the concept expanded to "cultural landscape," formalized by geographer Carl O. Sauer in 1925 as the modified environment resulting from human occupancy, emphasizing material expressions of culture over abstract ideals.^[15] This development underscored causal interactions between physical forms and societal practices, distinguishing landscapes as dynamic outcomes of natural and anthropogenic forces rather than static vistas.^[16]

Core Definitions and Scope

A landscape constitutes the visible, material characteristics of a terrestrial area, encompassing landforms, water bodies, vegetation, soils, and human modifications perceptible from a given vantage point. This definition emphasizes empirical observation of spatial patterns and their causal interrelations, such as how tectonic uplift shapes mountain topography or erosion sculpts valleys over geological timescales. Scholarly geography frames landscape as a holistic unit integrating physical elements—like relief, hydrology, and biota—with dynamic processes, distinguishing it from abstract or purely perceptual constructs.^[17]^[18] The scope of landscape extends beyond static description to include both natural formations driven by endogenous forces (e.g., volcanic activity forming basaltic plateaus) and anthropogenic alterations, such as terraced agriculture reshaping slopes for erosion control and productivity. In environmental science, it delineates bounded regions for analyzing ecological connectivity, where patch dynamics—interactions between habitat fragments—influence biodiversity and resilience; for instance, fragmentation in forested landscapes correlates with reduced species dispersal rates, as quantified in meta-analyses of habitat loss exceeding 20% thresholds. This interdisciplinary purview incorporates geomorphological evolution, biotic assemblages, and socio-economic imprints, rejecting narrower aesthetic or subjective interpretations in favor of verifiable causal mechanisms.^[19]^[20] Landscape studies thus delimit analysis to scalable extents—from local micro-landscapes (e.g., a 1 km² wetland) to regional macro-landscapes (e.g., a 10,000 km² basin)—facilitating causal inference on processes like sediment transport rates averaging 1-10 mm/year in temperate zones or vegetation succession following disturbances. Empirical scope prioritizes data from remote sensing and field surveys, such as LiDAR-derived elevation models revealing slope gradients influencing runoff, over ideologically filtered narratives. This approach underscores landscapes as empirical archives of planetary history, with scope bounded by observability and falsifiability rather than unbounded cultural symbolism.^[21]^[22]

Physical and Natural Landscapes

Geomorphological Processes and Formation

Endogenic processes, driven by internal sources of energy such as mantle convection and radioactive decay, generate the primary topographic relief that characterizes landscapes. These include tectonic uplift associated with plate convergence, divergence, and transform motions, which elevate crustal blocks and initiate mountain-building orogeny. Volcanic activity contributes by extruding magma to form edifices like shield volcanoes or stratovolcanoes, altering local topography through accumulation of lava flows and pyroclastic deposits.^[23]^[24] Exogenic processes, powered primarily by solar radiation, gravity, and atmospheric circulation, act to denude and reshape elevated terrains created by endogenic forces. Weathering initiates breakdown of bedrock through physical mechanisms like frost wedging in cold climates—where water expansion in cracks exerts pressures up to 30 MPa—or chemical reactions such as hydrolysis that dissolve silicates in humid environments. Erosion follows, transporting weathered material via agents including fluvial systems, which incise valleys at rates averaging 0.1–1 mm/year in temperate zones, glaciers that scour U-shaped valleys through basal sliding and plucking, and aeolian action that deflates dunes in arid regions.^[25]^[26] The formation of distinct landscape types emerges from the spatiotemporal interplay between uplift and denudation rates. In tectonically active settings, such as convergent margins where uplift exceeds erosion—reaching 1–10 mm/year in the Southern Alps of New Zealand—rugged, high-relief terrains persist with steep slopes and incised canyons. Conversely, in cratonic interiors with minimal uplift (<0.01 mm/year), prolonged exogenic dominance leads to pediplanation or peneplain development, flattening surfaces over millions of years as seen in parts of the African Shield. Mass wasting, including landslides triggered by seismic events or heavy rainfall, further modulates this balance by rapidly redistributing material downslope.^[27]^[28] Deposition concludes the geomorphic cycle by aggrading lowlands with eroded sediments, forming features like alluvial fans, deltas, and coastal plains. Fluvial deposition, for example, builds floodplains through overbank sedimentation during high-discharge events, with particle sizes decreasing downstream per Hjulström's curve. This cyclic progression—uplift, dissection, and infilling—explains landscape evolution timelines, such as the 5–10 million-year sculpting of the Appalachian Mountains from initial Paleozoic uplift to present subdued forms via Cenozoic erosion. Climate modulates exogenic efficacy; hyper-arid zones favor slow chemical weathering but rapid physical breakdown, while periglacial environments amplify frost action.^[29]^[25]

Classification and Types of Landscapes

Physical landscapes are classified primarily by their geomorphic features, which arise from interactions between tectonic activity, erosion, deposition, and weathering processes. These classifications emphasize landform assemblages, relief, and the dominant agents shaping the terrain, such as fluvial, glacial, aeolian, or marine forces.^[30]^[31] Physiographic systems further divide landscapes into regions defined by elevation, slope, rock type, and structural geology, independent of political boundaries, to map consistent terrain patterns globally.^[32] Major landform types include mountains, hills, plateaus, and plains. Mountains feature high elevation, typically over 600 meters, with steep slopes and rugged relief resulting from tectonic uplift and subsequent erosion; examples include fold mountains like the Himalayas, formed by continental collision starting around 50 million years ago.^[31] Hills possess lower relief, generally under 600 meters, often as erosional remnants or volcanic features. Plateaus are elevated, relatively flat expanses, such as the Colorado Plateau, shaped by uplift with minimal erosion, covering about 45% of Earth's land surface when including intermontane basins. Plains, encompassing vast low-relief areas like the Great Plains, form through sedimentary deposition or planation by erosion, occupying roughly 30-40% of continental surfaces.^[31]^[33] Classifications by dominant process yield additional types: fluvial landscapes, characterized by rivers carving valleys and depositing floodplains, as in the Mississippi River basin; glacial landscapes with U-shaped valleys, cirques, and moraines from ice movement, evident in regions like the Alps where Pleistocene glaciations sculpted terrain; arid or aeolian landscapes featuring dunes, yardangs, and deflation hollows due to wind erosion in low-precipitation zones, such as the Sahara Desert spanning 9.2 million square kilometers; karst landscapes with sinkholes, caves, and poljes from dissolution of soluble rocks like limestone; and coastal landscapes including cliffs, beaches, and spits formed by wave and tidal action.^[34]^[30] Volcanic landscapes, marked by craters, lava flows, and calderas, emerge from magmatic activity, as at Hawaii's active shields.^[33] Biophysical integrations, such as ecoregion classifications, link geomorphology to climate and vegetation, delineating types like tundra (permafrost-dominated lowlands above 60°N latitude), taiga (coniferous forests on glaciated shields), temperate grasslands on stable plains, and tropical rainforests in humid equatorial lowlands. These systems, developed by organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, identify 867 terrestrial ecoregions based on species distributions and physiographic continuity, though they incorporate ecological data beyond pure physical traits.^[35] Such categorizations facilitate understanding of landscape evolution, with tectonic stability in cratons preserving ancient forms while active margins produce dynamic mountain belts.^[36]

Landscape Ecology and Natural Dynamics

Landscape ecology examines the interactions between spatial patterns in landscapes and ecological processes, emphasizing how heterogeneity in land cover influences biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and population dynamics. This field integrates principles from ecology, geography, and geomorphology to analyze landscapes as dynamic mosaics of patches—nonlinear areas of relatively homogeneous environmental conditions—rather than uniform expanses. Core tenets include the recognition that landscape structure (composition and configuration of patches) affects function, with processes operating across multiple scales from local patches to regional extents. For instance, patch size and shape determine edge effects, where boundaries between habitat types alter microclimates, species interactions, and disturbance propagation, often reducing interior habitat quality in fragmented systems.^[37]^[4]^[38] Natural dynamics in landscapes are driven by recurrent disturbances such as wildfires, floods, and windstorms, which create and reshape patches, preventing monotonic succession toward a single climax state and maintaining heterogeneity. In fire-adapted systems like boreal forests, disturbances recur on intervals of 50–200 years depending on fuel accumulation and climate, resetting succession and promoting seral-stage diversity; for example, jack pine (Pinus banksiana) regenerates post-fire via serotinous cones, enhancing landscape resilience to repeated events. Succession follows these disturbances in predictable phases—initial colonization by pioneers, followed by competitive exclusion and maturation—yet outcomes vary with site conditions, seed banks, and dispersal, as modeled in frameworks like the LANDIS simulation tool, which quantifies age-class distributions and biomass shifts over centuries. Floodplain dynamics illustrate fluvial processes, where channel migration erodes and deposits sediments, generating successional gradients from bare gravel bars to mature riparian forests over decades, supporting high beta-diversity through habitat turnover.^[39]^[40]^[41] Connectivity emerges as a pivotal factor in natural dynamics, defined as the landscape's capacity to facilitate organism movement, gene flow, and resource transport between patches, countering isolation from fragmentation. In metapopulation theory, habitat connectivity sustains viable populations by enabling dispersal; empirical studies in grasslands show that corridor-like features increase pollinator movement by 20–50% compared to isolated patches, bolstering persistence amid disturbances. Conversely, low connectivity exacerbates extinction risks in dynamic landscapes, as seen in amphibian declines where matrix resistance (e.g., cropland barriers) halves effective dispersal distances. These processes underpin ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, where patch dynamics regulate forest carbon stocks through disturbance-recovery cycles, with global models estimating that altered fire regimes could shift terrestrial sinks by 10–20% by 2100 under warming scenarios. Landscape ecology thus underscores causal links between pattern and process, informing predictions of resilience without assuming static equilibria.^[4]^[42]^[43]

Human Interactions with Landscapes

Agricultural and Economic Utilization

Agricultural landscapes are primarily utilized for crop cultivation and livestock grazing, encompassing approximately 4,781 million hectares globally in 2022, of which 1,573 million hectares were cropland and 3,208 million hectares permanent meadows and pastures.^[44] This represents about half of the world's habitable land, with over three-quarters dedicated to livestock production despite its disproportionate resource demands relative to plant-based alternatives.^[45] Modifications such as terracing, as seen in the Batad rice terraces in the Philippines, enable cultivation on steep slopes by reducing erosion and maximizing arable area, supporting intensive rice farming in regions with limited flat land.^[46] Economically, these landscapes underpin global food security and contribute roughly 4% to world GDP, with agriculture, forestry, and fishing value added reaching $4.0 trillion in 2023.^[47] ^[48] In the United States, the sector and related industries added $1.537 trillion to GDP in 2023, accounting for 5.5% of the total, while farm real estate assets were valued at $3.67 trillion.^[49] ^[50] Practices like agroforestry integrate trees with crops and pastures, enhancing soil fertility, biodiversity, and yields while providing additional timber and non-timber products, as in silvopasture systems that combine livestock grazing with tree cultivation.^[51] Forested landscapes serve economic purposes through timber harvesting, fuelwood, and non-timber forest products, generating over $1.3 trillion annually and employing more than 33 million people worldwide.^[52] Sustainable management, including selective logging and reforestation, sustains these outputs while mitigating depletion risks, though overexploitation in some regions has led to landscape degradation.^[53] Overall, agricultural and forestry utilization drives rural economies, with historical techniques like medieval ridge-and-furrow plowing illustrating enduring adaptations to terrain for efficient drainage and soil management.^[54]

Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Industrial Changes

Urbanization converts expansive natural terrains—such as forests, farmlands, and wetlands—into dense built environments dominated by concrete, asphalt, and steel structures, fundamentally altering soil permeability, hydrology, and vegetation cover.^[55] This process has accelerated globally, with urban areas encompassing less than 3% of Earth's land surface yet supporting over 50% of the human population as of 2019.^[56]^[57] Between 2000 and 2020, global urban built-up areas expanded by approximately 313,000 square kilometers, reflecting a pattern where land consumption rates exceeded population growth, leading to sprawl that fragments habitats and reduces biodiversity hotspots.^[58] In regions like sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, urbanization rates have surged, converting up to 1-2% of regional land annually in high-growth areas, often at the expense of prime agricultural soils and riparian zones.^[59] Infrastructure development, including highways, railways, dams, and power lines, imposes linear barriers across landscapes, dissecting contiguous habitats and redirecting water flows that sustain ecosystems. Roads alone, totaling over 60 million kilometers worldwide by 2020, generate edge effects extending hundreds of meters into adjacent wildlands, facilitating invasive species proliferation and elevating predator access to prey populations.^[60] Dams, such as the Three Gorges Dam completed in 2006, submerge vast upstream areas—over 600 square kilometers in that case—while downstream they truncate sediment delivery essential for delta formation and floodplain fertility, exemplifying hydrological regime shifts with cascading ecological consequences.^[61] Railways and pipelines similarly disrupt migratory corridors; for example, transcontinental rail networks in North America have historically impeded wildlife movements, contributing to population declines in species like pronghorn antelope through barrier effects persisting into the 21st century.^[60] Industrial expansion overlays landscapes with extraction sites, factories, and waste impoundments, stripping vegetation and reshaping topography through open-pit mining and heavy machinery. In 19th-century Britain, coal extraction in areas like the Ruhr Valley and South Wales coalfields denuded thousands of hectares, leaving scarred pits and slag heaps that persisted as derelict land for decades, with soil erosion rates exceeding 100 tons per hectare annually in active zones.^[62] During World War I, intensified munitions production across Europe amplified these alterations, as forest clearances for factories and resource harvesting degraded watersheds and accelerated soil degradation across millions of hectares.^[63] Modern examples include bauxite mining in Australia, where operations since the 1960s have cleared over 10,000 square kilometers of tropical woodland, creating bauxite dust plumes that inhibit regrowth and alter local microclimates for generations absent remediation.^[64] These changes often yield long-term infertility, as evidenced by elevated heavy metal concentrations in post-industrial soils, necessitating engineered reclamation to restore even partial functionality.^[65]

Cultural and Historical Landscape Modifications

Human societies have long modified natural landscapes to embody cultural, religious, and symbolic values, creating enduring features such as gardens, terraces, and earthworks that reflect societal ideals and technological capabilities. In ancient Persia, the Achaemenid Empire developed enclosed paradise gardens (pairidaeza) around the 6th century BC, featuring symmetrical layouts with central water channels, fruit trees, and shaded pavilions to symbolize fertility and divine order, as exemplified by the gardens attributed to Cyrus the Great (r. 559–530 BC).^[66] These designs influenced subsequent Islamic and European garden traditions by integrating hydrology with aesthetics to transform arid terrains into oases.^[67] In Europe, formal garden designs reached monumental scale under Louis XIV at Versailles, where landscape architect André Le Nôtre began redesigning the grounds in 1661, expanding terraces, carving extensive parterres, and imposing radial axes across over 2,000 acres to project royal absolutism and control over nature.^[68] Le Nôtre's modifications included hydraulic engineering for fountains and groves, altering topography and hydrology to create a geometric imposition on the landscape that symbolized political power.^[69] By the 18th century, the English landscape garden movement reacted against such rigidity, favoring naturalistic scenes inspired by Claude Lorrain's paintings; designers like Lancelot "Capability" Brown (1716–1783) reshaped estates by relocating earth, planting clumps of trees, and constructing artificial lakes to evoke pastoral idylls, as seen in parks covering thousands of acres across Britain.^[70] Non-European examples include the Ifugao rice terraces in the Philippine Cordilleras, engineered by indigenous communities starting around 100 BC and spanning over 2,000 years of continuous modification, where steep mountainsides were carved into irrigated steps using stone walls and wooden canals, fostering communal rituals and spiritual ties to the land beyond mere agriculture.^[71] In medieval England, the open-field system's ridge-and-furrow plowing, emerging post-Roman era and peaking from the 11th to 14th centuries, produced undulating field patterns with ridges up to 22 yards wide by turning soil outwards from central furrows, a cultural artifact of communal land management visible today in former arable areas and indicative of adaptive agrarian traditions.^[72] These modifications, often persisting due to low erosion in grasslands, illustrate how historical practices embedded social organization into the terrain.^[73] Such cultural interventions highlight causal links between belief systems, technological limits, and environmental adaptation, with empirical evidence from archaeological surveys confirming their scale—for instance, Ifugao terraces covering 17,000 hectares—and longevity, though modern threats like depopulation underscore vulnerabilities absent in their formative contexts.^[74]

Landscape Management and Scientific Approaches

Integrated Management and Planning

Integrated landscape management (ILM) refers to a collaborative process that coordinates land use across sectors to balance ecological sustainability, economic productivity, and social needs within defined spatial units, typically encompassing watersheds, biomes, or administrative regions. This approach emphasizes adaptive strategies over rigid sectoral planning, drawing on empirical evidence that siloed management—such as isolated agricultural intensification or conservation—often leads to unintended consequences like biodiversity loss or resource depletion. For instance, a 2013 analysis outlined ten principles for ILM, including stakeholder participation, recognition of multiple scales, and continuous learning through monitoring, which have been applied to reconcile agriculture, conservation, and development goals.^[75]^[76] Core to ILM planning is the integration of biophysical data with socioeconomic factors via tools like geographic information systems (GIS) for spatial analysis and scenario modeling. Practitioners map ecosystem services, such as water regulation and soil retention, against human activities to identify trade-offs; for example, in river basin planning, GIS enables quantification of how upstream deforestation affects downstream flood risks, informing zoning that sustains yields while mitigating erosion. Stakeholder platforms, often termed "landscape arenas," facilitate negotiation among farmers, governments, and NGOs, with brokers mediating conflicts to co-design interventions. Empirical evaluations indicate that such inclusive processes enhance resilience, as seen in projects where diversified land uses reduced vulnerability to climate variability by 20-30% in targeted metrics like crop failure rates.^[77]^[78] Successful ILM frameworks prioritize measurable outcomes over ideological prescriptions, incorporating adaptive management cycles: baseline assessments, intervention implementation, monitoring via indicators (e.g., vegetation cover indices from satellite data), and iterative adjustments. In the Bahamas, a 2020-2025 Global Environment Facility project integrated land degradation control with food security, using participatory mapping to restore 10,000 hectares of degraded land while boosting smallholder productivity through agroforestry and soil conservation techniques. Similarly, Mozambique's World Bank-supported portfolio since 2018 coordinates forest, wildlife, and fisheries management across 1.5 million hectares, yielding documented increases in sustainable yields and reduced illegal logging via joint patrols and benefit-sharing agreements. Challenges persist, however, including institutional silos and short-term funding horizons, which studies attribute to inadequate enforcement and power imbalances among stakeholders, underscoring the need for binding multi-stakeholder compacts.^[79]^[80]^[78] Monitoring in ILM relies on verifiable metrics, such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) trends from Landsat imagery, to track progress against baselines; a 2020 review found that landscapes under ILM exhibited 15% higher resilience to droughts compared to conventional management, based on longitudinal data from 20 global sites. Policy integration involves aligning incentives, like payments for ecosystem services, which empirical trials in Latin America have shown to increase forest cover by 5-10% when tied to verifiable compliance. Despite advocacy from bodies like the FAO and UNDP, real-world adoption lags due to data gaps and resistance from vested interests, with meta-analyses revealing that only 40% of initiatives achieve sustained multi-objective gains without external enforcement.^[81]^[82]^[83]

Technological Tools and Recent Innovations

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) serve as core technological tools in landscape management, facilitating the spatial analysis, mapping, and modeling of terrain features, land cover changes, and ecological interactions to support decision-making in conservation and planning.^[84] Remote sensing, utilizing satellite and aerial imagery, enables large-scale monitoring of vegetation dynamics, soil erosion, and habitat fragmentation by capturing multispectral data that reveals biophysical properties not visible to the naked eye.^[85] Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have revolutionized fine-scale landscape assessment through photogrammetry and LiDAR integration, generating orthomosaics and digital elevation models with centimeter-level accuracy superior to traditional satellite remote sensing for detecting micro-topographic features and vegetation structure.^[85] For example, drone-based surveys have been applied to quantify terrace degradation in agricultural landscapes, combining UAV data with GIS to evaluate erosion risks and inform restoration strategies in regions like northeastern Italy.^[86] These tools bridge gaps between ground-level observations and broader satellite coverage, enhancing precision in biodiversity inventories and land-use change detection.^[87] Recent innovations from 2020 onward incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate the processing of vast remote sensing datasets, enabling predictive modeling of landscape patterns such as habitat connectivity and ecosystem service valuation.^[88] ML algorithms, for instance, classify land cover types and forecast fragmentation impacts with higher efficiency than manual methods, as demonstrated in analyses of global landscape shifts using datasets like HILDA+ from 1992 to 2020 extended into recent projections.^[89] ^[90] In landscape architecture, AI-driven tools optimize design schemes by simulating environmental responses, with applications in urban green space planning that integrate climatic data for resilience against biodiversity loss.^[91] These advancements, while promising, require validation against empirical field data to mitigate biases in training datasets derived from unevenly sampled regions.^[88]

Governance, Policy, and Economic Valuation

Governance of landscapes involves multi-level frameworks that integrate land-use planning, conservation, and sustainable management to balance ecological integrity with human needs. At the international level, the European Landscape Convention, adopted by the Council of Europe in 2000 and ratified by over 40 countries, defines landscape as an area shaped by natural and human factors, emphasizing its protection, management, and planning as a shared responsibility across sectors.^[92] This convention promotes policies that consider landscapes in all territorial decisions, including urban and rural planning, without limiting focus to exceptional areas. Complementing this, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), through its Aichi Targets and post-2020 framework, encourages landscape-scale approaches for biodiversity conservation, as seen in integrated initiatives like those supported by the World Bank for resource management and economic growth in developing regions.^[93] National policies often operationalize these principles through specific legislation. In the European Union, the Natura 2000 network, established under the Birds Directive (1979) and Habitats Directive (1992), designates over 27,000 sites covering 18% of EU land to protect habitats and species, influencing landscape governance by requiring impact assessments for developments.^[94] The EU's Nature Restoration Law, adopted in 2024, mandates restoration of at least 20% of EU land and sea by 2030, targeting degraded ecosystems to enhance landscape resilience.^[94] In the United States, while lacking a unified landscape convention, the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) requires environmental impact statements for federal actions affecting landscapes, guiding land-use decisions in public domains like national forests. These policies reflect causal links between governance structures and outcomes, such as reduced habitat fragmentation, though implementation varies due to jurisdictional overlaps and enforcement challenges. Economic valuation quantifies landscapes' contributions beyond market commodities, informing policy by assigning monetary values to ecosystem services like pollination, water regulation, and recreation. Common methods include revealed preference techniques, such as hedonic pricing, which estimates values from property price variations linked to landscape features, and stated preference methods like contingent valuation, where surveys elicit willingness-to-pay for non-market benefits.^[95] ^[96] For instance, agricultural landscapes provide multifunctionality, yielding private goods (e.g., crops) alongside public goods (e.g., soil conservation), with global valuations highlighting tourism's role; nature-based tourism generates billions annually, stabilizing rural economies in areas like mountain regions where it offsets declining farm incomes.^[97] ^[98] Value transfer methods adapt site-specific estimates to broader scales, aiding cost-benefit analyses for policies; a 2018 study mapped ecosystem services in Italian landscapes, revealing recreational values often exceeding agricultural output.^[99] ^[100] Such valuations underscore landscapes' role in economic resilience, though critics note methodological limitations like subjectivity in stated preferences, necessitating empirical validation from diverse datasets.^[101]

Representations and Perceptions in Culture

Landscape in Art, Photography, and Media

Landscape painting originated as background elements in ancient Greek and Roman frescoes depicting gardens and natural scenes, with the earliest known Western example from the Bronze Age settlement of Akrotiri around 1600 BCE.^[13]^[102] In Eastern traditions, Chinese artists developed landscape as an independent genre by the 4th century CE, emphasizing harmony between humans and nature through ink monochrome styles often created by Zen Buddhist monks.^[103] Western landscape gained autonomy during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, when economic prosperity from trade enabled artists like Salomon van Ruysdael to specialize in detailed depictions of flat terrains, rivers, and skies reflecting national identity and Calvinist views of divine order in nature.^[104] The 19th century saw landscape art flourish in Romanticism, prioritizing emotional responses to nature's grandeur, as in American Hudson River School works that celebrated wilderness as a symbol of national manifest destiny.^[105] This shifted toward realism and impressionism later, influencing modern abstract interpretations analyzed through compositional proportions in information theory frameworks applied to historical canvases.^[106] Landscape photography emerged post-1839 invention of the daguerreotype, but matured in the 20th century with Ansel Adams (1902–1984), whose black-and-white images of Yosemite National Park and the American West employed the Zone System for precise tonal control, capturing dramatic contrasts to advocate environmental preservation.^[107]^[108] Adams' work, including iconic views like The Tetons and the Snake River (1942), elevated photography to fine art while documenting threats to natural landscapes, aligning with his Sierra Club activism.^[109] In film and television, landscapes function beyond backdrops as narrative drivers, embodying isolation or vastness in genres like Westerns, where terrain influences plot and character arcs, as analyzed in cinematic studies of spatial dynamics.^[110] Video games integrate procedural generation for expansive, interactive landscapes, evolving from pixelated 8-bit terrains in the 1980s to photorealistic open worlds in titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), where terrain shapes exploration and environmental storytelling.^[111]^[112] These digital representations contest traditional notions of fixed landscapes, treating them as dynamic spaces constructed in real-time viewing.^[113]

Landscape in Literature and Philosophical Thought

In literature, landscapes often function as active elements that shape narrative mood, character development, and thematic depth, particularly from historical perspectives where settings reflect human internal states and broader ideologies. Authors have utilized descriptive landscapes to encode cultural messages, as seen in analyses of American Western literature where terrain influences identity and conflict.^[114] Similarly, in English literature, rural and urban landscapes in works by Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens highlight geographic influences on social dynamics and personal fate.^[115] The Romantic period marked a pivotal shift, elevating natural landscapes to symbols of the sublime, evoking awe, terror, and emotional transcendence amid industrialization's encroachment. Writers like William Wordsworth integrated Lake District scenery into poetry to convey nature's restorative power, portraying it as a counterforce to urban alienation and a catalyst for moral insight.^[116] This depiction emphasized dramatic elements such as mountains, storms, and vast vistas to mirror subjective human experiences, diverging from neoclassical order toward experiential immersion.^[117] Philosophically, landscapes have been interrogated through aesthetic lenses, contrasting objectivist paradigms—positing inherent environmental qualities as sources of value—with subjectivist ones prioritizing perceptual responses. Edmund Burke's 1757 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful categorized rugged, obscure terrains as sublime, inducing pleasurable fear, while smoother vistas evoked beauty, influencing subsequent views on nature's psychological impact.^[118] In ontology, Martin Heidegger reframed landscape not as passive scenery but as a relational mode of human dwelling, embedded in everyday practices and revealing being-in-the-world.^[119] Later thinkers like Tim Ingold conceptualized landscape as a dynamic "taskscape," emerging from inhabited activities rather than static forms, challenging visual dominance in favor of embodied engagement.^[120] Such perspectives underscore causal links between perceptual habits, cultural practices, and environmental valuation, informing ethical considerations in landscape interpretation without presupposing universal moral prescriptions.^[121]

Controversies and Debates

Natural vs. Anthropogenic Dominance

The extent to which natural processes—such as geological erosion, climatic variations, and ecological succession—dominate landscapes compared to anthropogenic factors like agriculture, urbanization, and resource extraction remains a central debate in environmental science. Empirical mapping reveals that human modifications have affected the vast majority of Earth's ice-free land, with over 50% directly transformed and 83% showing some influence from activities including cropland expansion, pastoralism, and infrastructure development. Comprehensive global assessments, such as those by The Nature Conservancy, estimate that 95% of terrestrial surfaces excluding Antarctica exhibit human modification, with 84% impacted by multiple stressors like roads, buildings, and altered hydrology.^[122] These findings underscore a shift from natural dominance in pre-agricultural eras to widespread anthropogenic control, particularly in temperate and tropical regions where population density correlates with intensified land use. Historical analyses further challenge notions of pristine natural landscapes, demonstrating that many areas perceived as untouched have been shaped by human activities for millennia. Archaeological syntheses indicate repeated interventions, including fire management by indigenous groups and early deforestation, have molded ecosystems across continents long before industrial eras, rendering truly natural baselines rare. For instance, European woodlands and North American prairies often maintain their current forms through ongoing human practices like grazing and selective harvesting, rather than autonomous ecological dynamics.^[123] Quantitative indices of human impact, derived from satellite data and field surveys, show strong negative correlations between modification levels and intact natural habitat proportions, with heavily altered zones comprising about 16% of land but exerting outsized effects on biodiversity and geomorphology.^[124] In contrast, remote polar and montane terrains retain greater natural dominance, where glacial and periglacial processes prevail over direct human interference, though indirect influences like atmospheric pollution persist.^[125] Proponents of natural dominance argue that approximately 50% of global land remains relatively low-impact, supporting viable native biomes where endogenous disturbances like wildfires and floods primarily dictate form and function.^[126] However, this view is contested by evidence of pervasive human footprints even in ostensibly wild areas, including nutrient loading from fertilizers and species introductions, which amplify anthropogenic signals over local natural variability.^[127] The debate informs land management, as overemphasizing natural baselines can overlook the adaptive resilience of anthropogenically shaped systems, while understating human roles risks ineffective restoration efforts that fail to account for historical contingencies. Peer-reviewed syntheses emphasize that causal attribution requires disentangling synergistic effects, where natural events like droughts interact with human-induced changes to accelerate landscape shifts.^[128]

Preservation, Development, and Land Use Conflicts

Land use conflicts often stem from the competing priorities of maintaining landscapes for ecological preservation—such as biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and watershed protection—and converting them for development purposes including agriculture, urbanization, and resource extraction. Globally, agricultural expansion has driven approximately 90% of forest cover changes between 2000 and 2018, primarily through conversion to cropland and pasture, which undermines preservation efforts aimed at halting habitat loss.^[129] Permanent agriculture alone accounted for 35% of global forest loss from 2001 to 2022, exacerbating tensions in regions where commodity production, such as soy and cattle ranching, clashes with protected area designations.^[130] Despite some progress, net forest loss persisted at 4.7 million hectares annually from 2010 to 2020, with gross deforestation rates higher due to ongoing pressures from these activities.^[131] In protected areas, development pressures frequently manifest as encroachment by surrounding communities seeking economic opportunities, leading to direct conflicts over resource access. For instance, national parks in Ghana and Tanzania experience significant threats from poverty and high population densities in adjacent areas, resulting in illegal logging, poaching, and agricultural incursions that degrade core preservation zones.^[132] Similarly, in Indonesia, the human footprint—measured by infrastructure, population density, and land conversion—increased markedly around 43 terrestrial national parks between 2012 and 2017, driven by palm oil plantations and mining, which fragment habitats and challenge enforcement of preservation boundaries.^[133] These cases highlight how local development needs, often tied to subsistence or export-driven economies, conflict with international preservation goals, sometimes resulting in weakened park management or policy reversals. Urban and infrastructural expansion further intensifies land use disputes, particularly in developed regions where sprawl converts natural landscapes into fragmented developments. In the United States, dispersed suburban growth patterns have contributed to habitat loss and increased impervious surfaces, straining preservation initiatives by altering hydrological cycles and promoting invasive species proliferation.^[134] Such conflicts extend to economic valuations, where preservation restricts high-value uses like real estate or extractive industries; for example, farmland preservation programs in rural areas face opposition from developers citing rising land costs and urbanization trends, as seen in U.S. Department of Agriculture analyses of competing rural development versus conservation policies.^[135] Systematic reviews of land-use change conflicts underscore that commodity frontiers, including soy and timber zones, amplify these tensions, with outcomes depending on governance strength rather than preservation rhetoric alone.^[136] Effective resolution requires integrated planning that acknowledges causal drivers like population growth and market demands, rather than relying solely on expansion of protected areas amid persistent development imperatives.^[137]

Climate Impacts and Attribution Challenges

Climate change has been associated with various landscape alterations, including permafrost degradation in Arctic regions, where thawing has accelerated since the late 20th century, releasing stored carbon and methane equivalent to an estimated 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually in recent decades.^[138] This process contributes to ground instability, thermokarst lake formation, and altered hydrology, with observations from satellite data and ground measurements indicating widespread active layer deepening by 10-20 cm per decade in parts of Siberia and Alaska.^[139] However, global vegetation trends show net greening rather than uniform degradation, with satellite observations from 1982 to 2015 revealing a 14% increase in leaf area index, primarily driven by CO2 fertilization enhancing photosynthesis in drylands and forests, offsetting aridification effects in some areas.^[140] ^[141] Wildfire regimes in temperate landscapes have intensified in frequency and extent in regions like the western United States, with burned area increasing by factors of 2-6 times since the mid-1980s, linked to warmer, drier conditions exacerbating fuel aridity.^[142] Permafrost thaw and shifting precipitation patterns also influence erosion and sediment transport, as evidenced by increased riverine sediment loads in Arctic basins by up to 30% over the past three decades.^[143] Biome migrations, such as poleward shifts in tree lines at rates of 1-2 meters per year in alpine regions, reflect temperature-driven responses, though empirical data indicate less than half of documented range shifts align strictly with warming predictions.^[144] Attributing these changes specifically to anthropogenic forcing faces significant hurdles, as natural variability from oscillations like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation can mimic or amplify observed trends, complicating isolation of greenhouse gas signals in short-term records.^[145] Detection-attribution frameworks require robust baselines, yet landscape data often suffer from sparse historical coverage, land-use confounders such as fire suppression increasing fuel loads, and model discrepancies in simulating non-linear feedbacks like vegetation-climate interactions.^[139] ^[146] For instance, while some studies attribute 20-50% of recent wildfire increases to anthropogenic warming via fuel dryness, critics highlight over-reliance on equilibrium assumptions ignoring episodic natural droughts and policy-driven ignitions, with global burned area actually declining 25% since 1998 due to agricultural expansion and fire management.^[142] ^[147] CO2 fertilization's role in greening, responsible for up to 70% of observed enhancements, further challenges narratives of pervasive degradation, as it demonstrates beneficial physiological effects countering temperature stress in many ecosystems.^[148] These attribution difficulties underscore the need for multi-driver analyses, as single-forcing claims risk overstating human influence amid inherent climatic variability.^[149]

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While accommodating cultural meaning and symbolism, Ingold's orientation was fundamentally different, conceiving of landscape as a lived phenomenon in which ...<|separator|>
[121]
Philosophy of Landscape: Narrative, Ethics, Welfare
Feb 29, 2024 · There is no single objective moral truth to be discovered here, and so no one way that the landscape ought to be in an ideal moral world. There ...
[122]
Global Human Modification - Global Development Risk Assessment |
The Global Human Modification map shows 95% of Earth's surface has some human modification, with 84% having multiple impacts, ranging from 0 (no modification) ...
[123]
'Pristine' landscapes haven't existed for thousands of years due to ...
Jun 7, 2016 · ... landscapes have been shaped by repeated human activity over many thousands of years. It reveals a pattern of significant, long-term, human ...
[124]
Indices of human impacts on landscapes: How do they reflect the ...
Our findings indicate a strong negative correlation between human impacts and the proportion of natural habitats, emphasizing the importance of refined ...
[125]
How humans have changed the Earth's surface in 2023 - BBC
Dec 27, 2023 · About 16% of that land has been heavily modified, according to one recent analysis. Urban development, large-scale engineering works and mining ...
[126]
50% of Earth's Land Surface Remains Relatively Untouched By ...
Aug 25, 2020 · They conclude that just over 50% of Earth's land surface can be classified as having low human influence or being untouched completely, with a ...
[127]
Unveiling patterns in human dominated landscapes through ...
Dec 4, 2023 · Most of the land, inhabited by almost all people, is dominated by built structures over plant biomass stocks.
[128]
Testing for synergistic effects of natural and anthropogenic ... - NIH
Feb 16, 2024 · Conclusions. Our study demonstrates interactive effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbance at landscape scales within a protected area.
[129]
Analysis of food system drivers of deforestation highlights foreign ...
Jul 16, 2024 · Approximately 90% of global forest cover changes between 2000 and 2018 were attributable to agricultural expansion, making food production ...<|separator|>
[130]
Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution - IOPscience
Jun 12, 2025 · Our results show that permanent agriculture was the leading driver of forest loss globally, representing 35% of loss from 2001 to 2022.
[131]
Deforestation and Forest Loss - Our World in Data
Between 2010 and 2020, the net loss in forests globally was 4.7 million hectares per year. However, deforestation rates were much higher. The UN FAO estimates ...Imported deforestation · Forests and Deforestation · Annual deforestation, 2015Missing: conflicts | Show results with:conflicts
[132]
Comparing pressures on national parks in Ghana and Tanzania
The main pressures identified include poverty and high population density in neighboring communities. These underlying pressures manifest on the parks in the ...
[133]
Changes in the human footprint in and around Indonesia's terrestrial ...
Feb 24, 2021 · This study measured the change in the human footprint in and around 43 terrestrial national parks over 5 years, between 2012 and 2017.
[134]
Land Use | US EPA
Feb 5, 2025 · Some land development patterns, in particular dispersed growth such as “suburbanization,” can contribute to a variety of environmental concerns.Missing: conflicts | Show results with:conflicts
[135]
[PDF] Rural Development versus Rural Preservation: Conflicting USDA ...
With the mounting cost of farm ownership and operation, and the rapid increase in urbanization, the issue of farmland preservation has.
[136]
Understanding land-use change conflict: a systematic review of case ...
In this study, we systematically coded case studies that report on conflict related to land-use change, including deforestation in commodity frontiers.
[137]
The emerging global crisis of land use - Chatham House
Nov 22, 2023 · This report examines the drivers of, and potential solutions to, this emerging crisis. It explores the nature of 'land wealth'.Missing: statistics | Show results with:statistics
[138]
NASA Helps Find Thawing Permafrost Adds to Near-Term Global ...
Oct 29, 2024 · Overall, they concluded that the region has been a net contributor to global warming in recent decades in large part because of another ...
[139]
Landscape Response to Climate Change - A Commentary - USGS.gov
Nov 9, 2022 · Today's changing climate will affect physical landscape processes around the world. In many cases, those effects are already being seen—in ...
[140]
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds - NASA
Apr 26, 2016 · Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth. However, carbon dioxide ...
[141]
Greening drylands despite warming consistent with carbon dioxide ...
The rising atmospheric CO2 concentration leads to a CO2 fertilization effect on plants-that is, increased photosynthetic uptake of CO2 by leaves and enhanced ...
[142]
[PDF] Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western ...
Our attribution explicitly assumes that anthropogenic increases in fuel aridity are additive to the wildfire extent that would have arisen from natural climate ...Missing: challenges | Show results with:challenges
[143]
How is Modern Climate Change Affecting Landscape Processes?
Dec 16, 2020 · Landscapes will respond to hydroclimatic changes associated with modern global warming, such as increasing extreme storms and wildfire.
[144]
Climate change and the global redistribution of biodiversity
Apr 11, 2023 · We found that less than half of all range-shift observations (46.60%) documented shifts towards higher latitudes, higher elevations, and greater marine depths.<|separator|>
[145]
The challenge to detect and attribute effects of climate change on ...
Aug 30, 2013 · A second, more challenging, end point is attribution to anthropogenic climate change, i.e. to anthropogenic climate drivers.
[146]
Landscape change and climate attribution, with a case study of ...
Jun 1, 2023 · This paper presents and illustrates a protocol for climate attribution of landscape responses. The major steps are ascertaining potential climate-related ...
[147]
Did Climate Change Do That? | Cato Institute
In recent years, these attributions have become more rapid. Articles tied the January 2025 Southern California wildfires to human-caused climate change, citing ...Did Climate Change Do That? · The Ipcc's Assessment Of... · Advocacy-Driven Attribution<|control11|><|separator|>
[148]
With CO2 Levels Rising, World's Drylands Are Turning Green
Jul 16, 2024 · Myneni's subsequent statistical analysis suggested that some 70 percent of this global greening could be attributed to CO2 fertilization.
[149]
Overstating the effects of anthropogenic climate change? A critical ...
Feb 8, 2023 · In the mid-latitudes, dry spells and heatwaves are typically caused by persistent blocking high-pressure systems (Woollings et al., 2018).Missing: landscape | Show results with:landscape<|separator|>