Fifteen years of Landscape Online: Looking back at the development of an e-journal

It has been 15 years by now that the International Association for Landscape Ecology – Chapter Germany (IALE-D) launched the e-journal Landscape Online. At the time of its first publication in 2007, to the best of our knowledge, it was one of the first open access peer-reviewed scientific e-journals in the field of Landscape Ecology. Over the last 15 years, it evolved from an idea driven by the German-speaking IALE community in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to a wider established journal linked to the international IALE community supported by partners across the world. In this Editorial, we (1) present the journal’s development and the regional distribution of authorships, (2) reflect on the topics addressed by the articles published, and (3) outline the latest developments in the light of continuities and changes

Nachhaltigkeit Südtirol – ein interaktives Portal für das Nachhaltigkeitsmonitoring auf Gemeindeebene

Die Agenda 21 fordert die Entwicklung und Anwendung von Indikatoren für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung sowie eine bessere Zugänglichkeit von Informationen. Bei der Umsetzung der Agenda 21 spielen Gemeinden eine entscheidende Rolle, da sie die Umwelt-, Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsentwicklung auf lokaler Ebene steuern, in unmittelbarem Kontakt zu ihren Bürgern stehen und somit eine nachhaltige Entwicklung direkt fördern können. Aus diesem Grund wurde das interaktive Portal „Nachhaltigkeit Südtirol“ (www.sustainability.bz.it) für das Nachhaltigkeitsmonitoring auf Gemeindeebene entwickelt. Es stellt Nutzern mittels eines interaktiven WebGIS 76 Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren für alle 116 Gemeinden der Autonomen Provinz Bozen-Südtirol (Italien) zur Verfügung. Die Indikatoren werden seit dem Jahr 2000 jährlich aktualisiert. Alle Ergebnisse sowie Dokumentationsblätter zu den Indikatoren können heruntergeladen werden. Das Nachhaltigkeitsportal bietet darüber hinaus drei Tools zur individuellen und detaillierteren Auswertung der Indikatoren und zum Vergleich zwischen Gemeinden bzw. verschiedenen Jahren. Es wurde bereits erfolgreich in lokalen Agenda-21-Prozessen in mehreren Gemeinden Südtirols angewendet

Odyssey of First IALE World Congress in Africa and Opportunities for North-South or South-South Collaboration

The landscape ecology community witnessed a landmark event in July 2023 as the 11th International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE) World Congress unfolded on the African continent for the first time. This editorial commemorates this historic occasion, tracing the journey from the inception of IALE Africa initiatives in 2002 to the culmination of the World Congress in Nairobi, Kenya, almost two decades later. Having previously graced Europe, Northern America, Australia, and Asia, the IALE World Congress embraced Africa, showcasing the global reach and inclusive spirit of landscape ecology.  This editorial explores the evolution of IALE Africa, highlighting the initiatives and the persistent efforts that led to the World Congress in Africa.  We delve into the socio-cultural and international significance of this shift, emphasising the unique perspectives and challenges faced by the African landscape ecology community. In addition to recounting the narrative of the 11th IALE World Congress, we assessed the participants involved, topics discussed, current trends, and priorities within the global landscape ecology research community.  To do so, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the conference proceedings.

Assessment and governance of Ecosystem Services for improving management effectiveness of Natura 2000 sites

The Natura 2000 network is the cornerstone of the EU Biodiversity Strategy aimed at halting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet in many EU Member States the level of development and execution of management plans and conservation measures of Natura 2000 sites is often very low due to scarce financial resources; for this reason management effectiveness is rarely achieved. This paper presents initial insights from the Life+ MGN project and highlights the costs and benefits associated with 2 out of 21 Natura 2000 study sites in Italy in order to present a new governance approach relying on the qualitative and quantitative valuation of Ecosystem Services (ES). Preliminary results suggest that the quantification of costs and benefits related to the Natura 2000 network is crucial for reaching Natura 2000 conservation objectives and measuring management effectiveness

Upscaling ecosystem service maps to administrative levels: beyond scale mismatches

As Ecosystem Services (ES) are the products of complex socio–ecological systems, their mapping requires a deep understanding of the spatial relationships and pattern that underpin ES provision. Upscaling ES maps is often carried out to avoid mismatches between the scale of ES assessment and that of their level of management. However, so far only a few efforts have been made to quantify how information loss occurs as data are aggregated to coarser scales. In the present study this was analyzed for three distinct case studies in the eastern Alps by comparing ES maps of outdoor recreation at the municipality level and at finer scales, i.e. high-resolution grids. Specifically, we adopt an innovative and flexible methodology based on Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), to disentangle the problem of the scale from the perspective of different levels of jurisdiction, by assessing in an iterative process how ES patterns change when upscaling high-resolution maps. Furthermore, we assess the sensitivity to the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) by calculating global statistics over three grid displacements. Our results demonstrate that spatial clusters tend to disappear when their extent becomes smaller than the features to which values are upscaled, leading to substantial information loss. Moreover, cross-comparison among grids and the municipality level highlights local anomalies that global spatial autocorrelation indicators fail to detect, revealing hidden clusters and inconsistencies among multiple scales. We conclude that, whenever ES maps are aggregated to a coarser scale, our methodology represents a suitable and flexible approach to explore clustering trends, shape and position of upscaling units, through graphs and maps showing spatial autocorrelation statistics. This can be crucial to finding the best compromise among scale mismatches, information loss and statistical bias that can directly affect the targeted ES mapping

Multiscale socio-ecological networks in the age of information

Interactions between people and ecological systems, through leisure or tourism activities, form a complex socio-ecological spatial network. The analysis of the benefits people derive from their interactions with nature—also referred to as cultural ecosystem services (CES)—enables a better understanding of these socio-ecological systems. In the age of information, the increasing availability of large social media databases enables a better understanding of complex socio-ecological interactions at an unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. Within this context, we model and analyze these interactions based on information extracted from geotagged photographs embedded into a multiscale socio-ecological network. We apply this approach to 16 case study sites in Europe using a social media database (Flickr) containing more than 150,000 validated and classified photographs. After evaluating the representativeness of the network, we investigate the impact of visitors’ origin on the distribution of socio-ecological interactions at different scales. First at a global scale, we develop a spatial measure of attractiveness and use this to identify four groups of sites. Then, at a local scale, we explore how the distance traveled by the users to reach a site affects the way they interact with this site in space and time. The approach developed here, integrating social media data into a network-based framework, offers a new way of visualizing and modeling interactions between humans and landscapes. Results provide valuable insights for understanding relationships between social demands for CES and the places of their realization, thus allowing for the development of more efficient conservation and planning strategies

Can We Model the Scenic Beauty of an Alpine Landscape?

During the last decade, agriculture has lost its importance in many European mountain regions and tourism, which benefits from attractive landscapes, has become a major source of income. Changes in landscape patterns and elements might affect scenic beauty and therefore the socio-economic welfare of a region. Our study aimed at modeling scenic beauty by quantifying the influence of landscape elements and patterns in relationship to distance. Focusing on Alpine landscapes in South and North Tyrol, we used a photographic questionnaire showing different landscape compositions. As mountain landscapes offer long vistas, we related scenic beauty to different distance zones. Our results indicate that the near zone contributes by 64% to the valuation of scenic beauty, the middle zone by 22%, and the far zone by 14%. In contrast to artificial elements, naturalness and diversity increased scenic beauty. Significant differences between different social groups (origin, age, gender, cultural background) occurred only between the local population and tourists regarding great landscape changes. Changes towards more homogenous landscapes were perceived negatively, thus political decision makers should support the conservation of the cultural landscape

The Influence of National Park Designation on Summer Tourism Demand in Austria

Nature protection comes with many benefits for the public and for biodiversity. Still, in private markets this beneficial land uses are seldomly provided. National parks are a particularly strict form of nature protection that also serves for educational purposes. Therefore, national parks are especially likely to be tourism destinations at the same time. However, there is little evidence how national parks contributed to tourism that rules out other tourism-influencing factors. The present project aims to study how national park designation in Austria contributed to the development of tourism overnight stays. It uses the synthetic control method, a way to compare “treated” national park destinations with synthetic “control” destinations that should have developed exactly the same in absence of the national park designation. Previous literature and first results point into the direction that tourism indeed profited from the national park designation