European cultural landscapes: connecting science, policy and practice

Monica Hernandez Morcillo

Abstract

European cultural landscapes are especially valued for the abundance of cultural ecosystemservices and the richness of traditional ecological knowledge they provide to society. Inrecent decades, land use changes have dramatically altered cultural landscapes acrossEurope, reducing their biocultural diversity and affecting their ability to provide thesebenefits. Developing indicators to improve accountability of cultural ecosystem services andconnecting the multiple stakeholders’ knowledge involved in land use decisions would helpto delineate more sustainable pathways. The aims of this PhD thesis are to: 1) examine themeasures and potential of cultural ecosystem services and traditional ecological knowledgein Europe, and; 2) explore transdisciplinary methods to develop joint research-actionagendas for European cultural landscapes. The findings indicate that local knowledgeimproves the quality of cultural ecosystem service indicators. Traditional ecologicalknowledge research exists mainly in remote peripheral areas in Europe and it has thepotential to increase society’s capacity to deal with environmental changes. Additionally,scientists, policy-makers and practitioners have similar priorities for guiding the future ofcultural landscape research. There is consensus on the importance of adapting to climatechange by managing specific landscape features such as hedgerows or windbreaks inagroforestry systems. These findings contribute to our understanding of how to betteraccount for intangible landscape benefits and integrate knowledge to foster the sustainablemanagement of cultural landscapes in Europe.

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