Landscapes are not only what lies before our eyes but what lies within our heads.
What exactly is a landscape? It depends on who you ask. A geographer will most likely give you a very different answer to an anthropologist. A landscape architect will have yet another perspective.
And that makes it difficult to establish consistent research and management policies that can deal with the challenges of climate change.
It is a problem that exercises the minds of researchers at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). The multidisciplinary teams at IWMI often combine the efforts of physical scientists — like hydrologists and GIS mappers — with social scientists. If they cannot agree on common definitions, then the benefits of a collaborative approach to natural resource management could prove elusive. But talking to scientists from different disciplines reveals that multiple landscape definitions may actually be more helpful than searching for one common classification.
On the map
In recent decades landscape studies have been transformed by remote sensing technologies like satellite mapping. Cameras orbiting the Earth can now identify objects as small as 1 metre. Add to that the processing capacity of modern computing, and landscapes can begin to be defined in astonishing complexity.
One of IWMI’s concerns is to differentiate between areas of agricultural land, particularly to establish whether it is rain fed or irrigated. Each puts its own demands on water resources, so pinpointing these approaches at the landscape scale can potentially help policy makers, farmers and conservationists decide how to allocate limited resources.
From a remote sensing perspective, a clear definition is needed if the land-use type is to have any predictive meaning. And sure enough, IWMI’s remote sensing researchers are creating technical definitions that can be shared by other scientists.
“These areas are measured through what we call ‘geospatial patches’” explains Dr. Yann Chemin, a remote sensing researcher at IWMI. “In other words, we define them by their main biophysical attribute. So the biophysical context — a rainfed landscape, for instance — can be seen as a spatially homogenous area where rainfed agriculture is the main anthropogenic or human impact factor.”
Common definitions like these make it easier for the global scientific community to collaborate, but may not really capture all the aspects of what constitutes a landscape. For example, geospatial patches require us to draw sharp boundaries between landscapes when in reality they might not be so clear cut. Often landscapes gradually transition from one to another. And what about other activities taking place within the same or overlapping landscapes?
“Of course we accept that the definitions we use cannot capture the full complexity of a given environment. But science needs common terms in order for the global research community to function,” says Dr. Chemin.
A landscape of the mind
IWMI anthropologist Dr Jayne Curnow, offers a very different perspective.
“A landscape is not objective. Conceptualizations of landscapes are created by human imaginings and actions which are mediated by scientific knowledge, cultural practices, social relations, the State and other institutions.”
The “outback”, for instance, is a common Australian term for remote areas, explains Curnow. For Aboriginal people it is a landscape imbued with great cultural significance, rich with sacred sites and tracks linked to the creation of the world, spirits and ancestors. To non-Aboriginal people, however, the outback evokes a landscape that is open and vast. A place for tourism and resource extraction, but also one that is potentially dangerous. “It is a very different interpretation of the same space,” she says.
To complicate matters further, researchers at IWMI talk about not just landscapes but also waterscapes. These are commonly defined as the interaction between humans and the water in their environment. Consequently a waterscape encompasses all of the social, economic and political processes through which water in nature is perceived and manipulated by societies.
Bringing it all together
“All this highlights the strength of the multi-disciplinary discussion we are having at IWMI”, says Curnow. ”Certainly from a social science perspective I would push back against the reduction of landscapes to a purely geographical construct.”
“But it is important to understand that these definitions do not contradict but rather complement each other. The challenge is to not reduce landscapes to just one concept but to combine all of these aspects into our research,” she concludes.
This combination is what is needed, especially since the landscape approach is intended to inform and shape policies and integrated management. Policies depend on definitions, and policies have failed or stalled when subsequent application was thwarted by definitions that were not clear enough.
Across the hall from Curnow’s office, Chemin agrees. “You cannot solve the complex problems of natural resource management by simply appealing to one discipline. The most exciting and innovative areas of science are where one discipline rubs up against another.”
Blog by Anna Deinhard, Communications Fellow, with contributions from Dr Jayne Curnow, Social Scientist and Dr Yann Chemin, Remote Sensing Scientists. For more information please contact j.curnow@cgiar.org or y.chemin@cgiar.org
Photo: R. Jamieson
