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A natural landscape is the original
landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
that exists before it is acted upon by human culture. The natural landscape and the
cultural landscape Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies, to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment. As defined by the World Heritage Committee, it is the "cultural properties hatrepresent the co ...
are separate parts of the landscape. However, in the 21st century, landscapes that are totally untouched by human activity no longer exist, so that reference is sometimes now made to degrees of naturalness within a landscape.The
European Environment Agency The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) which provides independent information on the environment. Definition The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) which provides i ...
's planned forest naturalness index is an example of an attempt to define one type of natural landscape in Europe. The Agency lists forests in three categories: (1) Plantations; (2) Semi-natural; and (3) Naturally dynamic. The latter are "forests whose structure, composition and function have been shaped by natural dynamics without substantial
anthropogenic Anthropogenic ("human" + "generating") is an adjective that may refer to: * Anthropogeny, the study of the origins of humanity Counterintuitively, anthropogenic may also refer to things that have been generated by humans, as follows: * Human im ...
influence over a long period of time".
In '' Silent Spring'' (1962) Rachel Carson describes a roadside verge as it used to look: "Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year" and then how it looks now following the use of
herbicide Herbicides (, ), also commonly known as weedkillers, are substances used to control undesired plants, also known as weeds.EPA. February 201Pesticides Industry. Sales and Usage 2006 and 2007: Market Estimates. Summary in press releasMain page fo ...
s: "The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire". Even though the landscape before it is sprayed is biologically degraded, and may well contains alien species, the concept of what might constitute a natural landscape can still be deduced from the context. The phrase "natural landscape" was first used in connection with landscape painting, and landscape gardening, to contrast a formal style with a more natural one, closer to nature. Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) was to further conceptualize this into the idea of a natural landscape ''separate'' from the
cultural landscape Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies, to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment. As defined by the World Heritage Committee, it is the "cultural properties hatrepresent the co ...
. Then in 1908 geographer
Otto Schlüter Otto Schlüter (12 November 1872 in Witten – 12 October 1959 in Halle) was a German geographer. Schlüter was a professor of geography at the University of Halle Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universitä ...
developed the terms original landscape (''Urlandschaft'') and its opposite cultural landscape (''Kulturlandschaft'') in an attempt to give the science of geography a subject matter that was different from the other sciences. An early use of the actual phrase "natural landscape" by a geographer can be found in
Carl O. Sauer Carl Ortwin Sauer (December 24, 1889 – July 18, 1975) was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the d ...
's paper "The Morphology of Landscape" (1925).


Origins of the term

The concept of a natural landscape was first developed in connection with landscape painting, though the actual term itself was first used in relation to landscape gardening. In both cases it was used to contrast a formal style with a more natural one, that is closer to nature. Chunglin Kwa suggests, "that a seventeenth-century or early-eighteenth-century person could experience natural scenery 'just like on a painting,’ and so, with or without the use of the word itself, designate it as a landscape." With regard to landscape gardening John Aikin, commented in 1794: "Whatever, therefore, there be of ''novelty'' in the singular scenery of an artificial garden, it is soon exhausted, whereas the infinite diversity of a natural landscape presents an inexhaustible flore of new forms". Writing in 1844 the prominent American landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing comments: "straight canals, round or oblong pieces of water, and all the regular forms of the geometric mode ... would evidently be in violent opposition to the whole character and expression of natural landscape". In his extensive travels in South America, Alexander von Humboldt became the first to conceptualize a natural landscape separate from the cultural landscape, though he does not actually use these terms. Andrew Jackson Downing was aware of, and sympathetic to, Humboldt's ideas, which therefore influenced American landscape gardening. Subsequently, the geographer
Otto Schlüter Otto Schlüter (12 November 1872 in Witten – 12 October 1959 in Halle) was a German geographer. Schlüter was a professor of geography at the University of Halle Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universitä ...
, in 1908, argued that by defining geography as a ''Landschaftskunde'' (landscape science) would give geography a logical subject matter shared by no other discipline. He defined two forms of landscape: the ''Urlandschaft'' (original landscape) or landscape that existed before major human induced changes and the ''Kulturlandschaft'' (cultural landscape) a landscape created by human culture. Schlüter argued that the major task of geography was to trace the changes in these two landscapes. The term natural landscape is sometimes used as a synonym for
wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...
, but for geographers natural landscape is a scientific term which refers to the
biological Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...
, geological, climatological and other aspects of a landscape, not the cultural values that are implied by the word wilderness.


The natural and conservation

Matters are complicated by the fact that the words nature and natural have more than one meaning. On the one hand there is the main dictionary meaning for nature: "The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations." On the other hand, there is the growing awareness, especially since Charles Darwin, of humanities biological affinity with nature. The
dualism Dualism most commonly refers to: * Mind–body dualism, a philosophical view which holds that mental phenomena are, at least in certain respects, not physical phenomena, or that the mind and the body are distinct and separable from one another ** ...
of the first definition has its roots is an "ancient concept", because early people viewed "nature, or the nonhuman world as a divine ''Other'', godlike in its separation from humans." In the West, Christianity's myth of the fall, that is the expulsion of humankind from the
Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...
, where all creation lived in harmony, into an imperfect world, has been the major influence. Cartesian dualism, from the seventeenth century on, further reinforced this dualistic thinking about nature. With this
dualism Dualism most commonly refers to: * Mind–body dualism, a philosophical view which holds that mental phenomena are, at least in certain respects, not physical phenomena, or that the mind and the body are distinct and separable from one another ** ...
goes value judgement as to the superiority of the natural over the artificial. Modern science, however, is moving towards a holistic view of nature.


America

What is meant by natural, within the American conservation movement, has been changing over the last century and a half. In the mid-nineteenth century American began to realize that the land was becoming more and more domesticated and wildlife was disappearing. This led to the creation of American National Parks and other conservation sites. Initially it was believed that all that was needed to do was to separate what was seen as natural landscape and "avoid disturbances such as logging, grazing, fire and insect outbreaks."Aplett and Cole, p. 15. This, and subsequent environmental policy, until recently, was influenced by ideas of the wilderness. However, this policy was not consistently applied, and in Yellowstone Park, to take one example, the existing ecology was altered, firstly by the exclusion of Native Americans and later with the virtual extermination of the wolf population. A century later, in the mid-twentieth century, it began to be believed that the earlier policy of "protection from disturbance was inadequate to preserve park values", and that is that direct human intervention was necessary to restore the landscape of National Parks to its ‘'natural'’ condition. In 1963 the Leopold Report argued that "A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America". This policy change eventually led to the restoration of wolves in Yellowstone Park in the 1990s. However, recent research in various disciplines indicates that a pristine natural or "primitive" landscape is a myth, and it now realised that people have been changing the natural into a cultural landscape for a long while, and that there are few places untouched in some way from human influence. The earlier conservation policies were now seen as cultural interventions. The idea of what is natural and what artificial or cultural, and how to maintain the natural elements in a landscape, has been further complicated by the discovery of global warming and how it is changing natural landscapes. Also important is a reaction recently amongst scholars against dualistic thinking about nature and culture. Maria Kaika comments: "Nowadays, we are beginning to see nature and culture as intertwined once again – not ontologically separated anymore What I used to perceive as a compartmentalized world, consisting of neatly and tightly sealed, autonomous 'space envelopes' (the home, the city, and nature) was, in fact, a messy socio-spatial continuum". And William Cronon argues against the idea of wilderness because it "involves a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural" and affirms that "wildness (as opposed to wilderness) can be found anywhere" even "in the cracks of a Manhattan sidewalk."Cronon, p. 85. According to Cronon we have to "abandon the dualism that sees the tree in the garden as artificial and the tree in the wilderness as natural Both in some ultimate sense are wild." Here he bends somewhat the regular dictionary meaning of wild, to emphasise that nothing natural, even in a garden, is fully under human control.


Europe

The landscape of Europe has considerably altered by people and even in an area, like the
Cairngorm Mountains The Cairngorms ( gd, Am Monadh Ruadh) are a mountain range in the eastern Highlands of Scotland closely associated with the mountain Cairn Gorm. The Cairngorms became part of Scotland's second national park (the Cairngorms National Park) on 1 ...
of Scotland, with a low population density, only " the high summits of the
Cairngorm Mountains The Cairngorms ( gd, Am Monadh Ruadh) are a mountain range in the eastern Highlands of Scotland closely associated with the mountain Cairn Gorm. The Cairngorms became part of Scotland's second national park (the Cairngorms National Park) on 1 ...
, consist entirely of natural elements. These ''high summits'' are of course only part of the Cairngorms, and there are no longer wolves, bears, wild boar or lynx in Scotland's wilderness.Fraser Darling and Boyd (1969) p. 64 The Scots pine in the form of the Caledonian forest also covered much more of the Scottish landscape than today. The Swiss National Park, however, represent a more natural landscape. It was founded in 1914, and is one of the earliest national parks in Europe. Visitors are not allowed to leave the motor road, or paths through the park, make fire or camp. The only building within the park is Chamanna Cluozza, mountain hut. It is also forbidden to disturb the animals or the plants, or to take home anything found in the park. Dogs are not allowed. Due to these strict rules, the Swiss National Park is the only park in the Alps who has been categorized by the
IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...
as a strict nature reserve, which is the highest protection level.


History of natural landscape

No place on the Earth is unaffected by people and their culture. People are part of biodiversity, but human activity affects biodiversity, and this alters the natural landscape. Mankind have altered landscape to such an extent that few places on earth remain pristine, but once free of human influences, the landscape can return to a natural or near natural state.YouTube, Professor James Lovelock, We can't save the planet, BBC NEWS, 2010/03/30
/ref> Even the remote Yukon and
Alaskan Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...
wilderness, the bi-national Kluane-Wrangell-St. Elias-Glacier Bay-Tatshenshini-Alsek park system comprising
Kluane Kluane is an electoral district which returns a member (known as an MLA) to the Legislative Assembly of the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is named after Kluane National Park, which is within the riding. It is one of the Yukon's eight rural dis ...
, Wrangell-St Elias, Glacier Bay and Tatshenshini-Alsek parks, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is not free from human influence, because the
Kluane National Park Kluane National Park and Reserve (; french: Parc national et réserve de parc national de Kluane) are two protected areas in the southwest corner of the territory of Yukon. The National Park Reserve was set aside in 1972 to become a national par ...
lies within the traditional territories of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and
Kluane First Nation The Kluane First Nation (KFN) is a First Nations band government in Yukon, Canada. Its main centre is in Burwash Landing, Yukon along the Alaska Highway on the shores of Kluane Lake, the territory's largest lake. The native language spoken by the ...
who have a long history of living in this region. Through their respective Final Agreements with the Canadian Government, they have made into law their rights to harvest in this region.


Procession

Through different intervals of time, the process of natural landscapes have been shaped by a series of
landform A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, ...
s, mostly due to its factors, including tectonics, erosion, weathering and vegetation.


Examples of cultural forces

Cultural forces intentionally or unintentionally, have an influence upon the landscape.
Cultural landscapes Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies, to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment. As defined by the World Heritage Committee, it is the "cultural properties hatrepresent the co ...
are places or artifacts created and maintained by people. Examples of cultural intrusions into a landscape are: fences, roads, parking lots, sand pits, buildings, hiking trails, management of plants, including the introduction of
invasive species An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species ad ...
, extraction or removal of plants, management of animals, mining, hunting, natural landscaping, farming and forestry, pollution. Areas that might be confused with a natural landscape include public parks, farms, orchards, artificial lakes and reservoirs, managed forests, golf courses, nature center trails, gardens.


See also


Notes


References


External links

*Developing a forest naturalness indicator for Europ

*Scottish heritage: Natural Space

*Carl O. Sauer, "The Morphology of Landscape" ''University of California Publications in Geography'', vol. 2, No. 2, 12 October 1925, pp. 19–53 (scroll down)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Natural Landscape Biodiversity Biology terminology Ecology Environmental science Environmental law Evolution Geography Habitats Habitat Landscape Nature Philosophy of biology Wilderness