Landscapes: Bridging the gaps between science, policy and people

Landscape and Urban Planning 100 (2011) 330–332
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Landscape and Urban Planning
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan
Landscapes: Bridging the gaps between science, policy and people
Wenche E. Dramstad ∗ , Wendy J. Fjellstad
Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, P.O. Box 115, NO-1431 Ås, Norway
article
info
abstract
Article history:
Available online 2 March 2011
Keywords:
Landscape change
Indicator development
Sustainability
The centennial volume of this journal provides a fitting time to stop and reflect. Do we know where we are
heading Are we progressing in the right direction Having studied landscape change for some years, we
have seen the tremendous power of engagement that can be found in landscapes. Landscape is a theme
that most people easily relate to. At the same time, landscape research has provided many appropriate
tools for documenting landscape change and the effects of change. Yet in spite of public engagement and
scientific knowledge, we still find many examples of negative landscape developments. In this paper we
reflect on the applications of landscape research and the issue of communicating scientific findings to
policy, management, landowners and the general public. Do we need a greater focus on communication
to achieve sustainable landscape development
© 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Changing landscapes
Landscapes are continuously changing, as has been thoroughly
documented from many regions of the world. This is not, in itself,
any reason for concern. Landscapes are dynamic and many landscape
changes are also reversible. It is worth noting, though, the
extent to which we have increased our ability to make changes. As
a result, landscape changes are occurring both faster and on a larger
scale than when Landscape and Urban Planning marked its 5th,
or even 50th, volume. Many people today perceive the increased
speed and extent of landscape changes as a threat (Antrop, 2006
and references therein), and in some cases entire landscape types
appear at risk of disappearing (Green and Vos, 2001).
Witnessing recent large scale landscape changes, their effects
have been a natural focus of research. This effort by the scientific
community has been paralleled by a request from policy
makers and managers for scientific evidence and objective measurements
on which to base their decisions, expressed e.g., through
a steadily increasing number of indicator development and reporting
initiatives. As a result, many landscape researchers have spent
considerable time and energy developing tools of various sorts to
link knowledge about landscapes and landscape change, with landscape
policy and action. This has been a successful endeavour in
terms of supplying a wide range of tools enabling comparisons of
landscapes over space and time.
As the tools have become available, changes are being documented
and reported. The European Environment Agency, for
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +47 64 94 96 84.
E-mail addresses: wenche.dramstad@skogoglandskap.no (W.E. Dramstad),
wendy.fjellstad@skogoglandskap.no (W.J. Fjellstad).
instance, reports continuously on a range of landscape changes that
are high on the political agenda, such as urban sprawl, biodiversity
loss and soil sealing affecting agricultural land. Also several national
and multi-national monitoring initiatives have been launched, all
reporting indicators of change (e.g., the LUCAS survey, the Dobříš
assessment, The Countryside Survey of the UK, NILS in Sweden, the
3Q-programme of Norway).
2. Failure to halt negative change
At this point of retrospective self-scrutiny we may stop and ask:
what are the “real world effects” of our work A gap reveals itself
between sciences and policy (e.g., Lenz and Peters, 2006; McNie,
2007; see also Beunen and Opdam, 2011) and several authors have
questioned the effect of indicator development efforts on policy and
policy making (e.g., Bell and Morse, 2003; Böhringer and Jochem,
2007). Has our work made a difference
In spite of all the scientific knowledge, the metrics, indicators,
and other tools such as legal measures, public awareness measures,
and a European Landscape Convention – landscape changes
continue unabated. Although an increasing weight of evidence has
shown negative side-effects of certain types of landscape change,
there seems to be little documentation of these changes being
avoided or reduced.
Perhaps the most obvious example, considering the immense
challenges of a growing world population, is the loss of agricultural
land. The topic has received particular attention in relation
to urbanization and land abandonment, and the loss of agricultural
land has caused concern in the USA (Hellerstein et al.,
2002), as well as in Europe. The European Environment Agency
reports how urban sprawl in the Mediterranean coastal region
0169-2046/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.02.003

W.E. Dramstad, W.J. Fjellstad / Landscape and Urban Planning 100 (2011) 330–332 331
has led to a farmland loss of 3% during the 1990s, of which 60%
was of high quality for agriculture (EEA, 2006). The Countryside
survey of 2007 reports how the area occupied by buildings in
the rural environment in England increased by 3.9% (28,000 ha)
since 1998. According to Hinrichsen (1997), China lost close to
one million hectares of farmland each year between 1987 and
1992 due to urbanization and the expansion of roads and industries,
while urban sprawl takes over nearly 400,000 ha of farmland
each year in the US. Even in Norway, a country with just 3%
cultivatable land and strong legal measures to protect this, agricultural
land is being converted to built-up land (Fjellstad and
Dramstad, 2007). In all these countries, farmland is being lost,
even though the scientific evidence for the multiple functions
and values of well-managed agricultural landscapes is overwhelming.
When even landscapes necessary for the sustainable production
of food are undervalued, it is perhaps not surprising that
other types of landscapes suffer negative changes. Coastal areas
are subject to very restrictive development policy in Norway, and
a number of regulations apply. Nevertheless, a study in the southeastern
part of the country documented a 12% increase in numbers
of buildings during a 20 year period within the designated 100 m
wide zone supposedly protected from development. This is not
a situation specific to Norway. The coasts of the Mediterranean,
for example, have always been attractive areas for development.
Here the urbanization rate in 1995 was 62%, and it has been forecasted
to grow to 72% by 2025 (UNEP/MAP-Plan Bleu, 2009). In
the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) reports concern over the fact that although coastal
areas only comprise 17% of the contiguous land area, as of 2003 they
were populated by more than half (53%) of the nation’s population.
Similar concern over development in coastal areas is reported from
a number of regions as far apart as Nova Scotia and the Black Sea
coastline of Bulgaria. What is the role of landscape science in this
process
3. The challenge of protecting landscape values
One positive sign of an increasing recognition of landscape values
in many countries is the expanding area of land under some
form of landscape protection. Even in such areas however, scientific
knowledge seems slow to inform landscape management. Landscape
protection is supposedly a rather strong management tool,
at least requiring respect from local planning and management
authorities. However, when this protection applies to landscapes
generated through agricultural activities, a number of new challenges
arise. These landscapes require human intervention if they
are to persist in their current state, yet the types of land use that
shaped the landscape may no longer be economically viable. There
may also be a lack of understanding about the how specific types
of management influence the landscape. In Norway, for example,
a study demonstrated how landscape protection was commonly
interpreted as meaning a stop to human activity, leading to conflicts
with local people (Fjellstad et al., 2009). Some farmers experienced
landscape protection on their land as an infringement of
their property rights, and a common feeling was that “...each
generation should be allowed to make their mark on these landscapes”.
Protected Landscapes encapsulate the difficulties seen in all
landscape management, where different interests and values must
be balanced against one another, and the rights of the individual
must be balanced against the rights of society and future generations.
If we look to examples of successful Protected Landscapes,
can we improve landscape development more generally, also making
everyday landscapes more sustainable
4. Sustainable landscapes
An important driving force for much landscape research
probably originated in 1987 with the quest for a sustainable development.
The aim to “meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs” (United Nations, 1987) clearly demands a focus on the use
and management of resources, including land area. For the knowledge
generated by landscape researchers to be translated into real
world changes, we probably need to focus more on answering the
“so what” questions. We need to highlight how one person’s “mark
on the landscape” may affect the landscape for other members of
society. We need to communicate the consequences of landscape
change in a sustainability perspective, and we need to communicate
to the right audience.
There are examples of researchers who have focused on these
challenges. Joan Nassauer, for instance, has documented one
approach to achieving progress in a more sustainable direction
through making positive changes attractive to the people with a say
in the matter (e.g., Nassauer, 1997). Richard T.T. Forman has shown
several examples of compiling complex, research based knowledge
into easy-to-understand rules of thumb for planners and managers
(e.g., Forman, 2008). A more extended list is outside the scope of
this paper; suffice it to say that a number of examples now exist
and we are optimistic that more will follow.
As our examples illustrate, even with widely accepted aims such
as food security, negative trends are difficult to halt, in spite of
thorough documentation. What then to expect with aims of lower
general acceptance Today, biodiversity remains a value of interest
primarily to a small minority, and is sometimes even ridiculed by
the broader community in cases where its protection could interfere
with a desired development project. Similarly, cultural heritage
preservation is often associated with large costs for developers or
land owners and may effectively stop all land use change. It may
seem that biodiversity and cultural heritage values are more highly
regarded by academic researchers and planning experts than by
landowners and the general public. However, because both biodiversity
and cultural heritage are so strongly linked to the landscape,
it may be that placing these values in a landscape context can
provide a better way of communicating about them. For example,
when communicating with the general public, photographs (e.g.,
www.tilbakeblikk.no) have a tremendous potential for generating
interest and involvement, far beyond most tables and pie charts.
Through our own studies of landscape change, including monitoring,
indicator development and communication of findings to
policy makers and managers, we have clearly seen the power of
interest and communication that the landscape holds. Documenting
changes in meaningful ways to different audiences can have
great effect.
5. Conclusion
It is our hope that through the next 100 volumes of Landscape
and Urban Planning, more examples will appear documenting how
landscape research and scientific knowledge have influenced landscape
development and management, in urban as well as rural and
natural environments. The gap between science and policy must
be bridged and a dialogue established between researchers, policy
makers and those actively changing the landscape – the planners,
developers and landowners – with the common goal to generate
sustainable landscapes. To achieve this, we may need to focus more
effort on establishing such a dialogue, and less on development of
new tools. We may not know the entire road, but by building on
existing knowledge we should be moving in the right direction.
The success of our efforts will be recorded in the landscapes of the
future.

332 W.E. Dramstad, W.J. Fjellstad / Landscape and Urban Planning 100 (2011) 330–332
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12.
Wenche Dramstad is a senior researcher and head of the landscape section at the
Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute (NFLI). She has a PhD in Landscape Ecology
from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and has been working as a
researcher at NFLI since 1997. Her main area of work has been the development
of the Norwegian Monitoring Programme for Agricultural Landscapes, in particular
indicator development and reporting. She is currently involved in research focusing
on perceptions of landscape change, and on mapping and analysing rural landscape
change, including analysis of how landscape ecology can influence land use
planning.
Wendy Fjellstad has a PhD in Landscape Ecology from University of Durham, UK.
She was based at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research while working on
her PhD and moved to the Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute in 1999. Her
main responsibilities have included coordinating the Norwegian Monitoring Programme
for Agricultural Landscapes (the 3Q Programme), analysis and reporting
on landscape status and landscape change, and developing and reporting agrienvironmental
indicators, including involvement in the OECD work on indicators
for biodiversity, habitats, landscapes and farm management.