An empirical study of Thailand cities' color landscapes

Color landscapes are important parts of cultural landscapes. Cities are cradles of human spiritual and material civilizations. As a city changes, its unique cultural context also changes. One of the most significant features of a city is its color landscapes, which help to convey the culture and spirit of a city in a deeply intuitive way. The color landscapes not only shape a city image, highlights a city personality, and transmits cultural information but it is also an important aid in helping people to perceive regional cultural values and experience folk customs. With these concepts in mind, the researchers of this study have selected three typical tourist cities in Thailand as the basis for an empirical study. Three main findings are discussed: (1) Thailand's city color landscapes tend to consist of pure colors with high saturation, and colorful colors have been integrated into Thai people's daily life, which reflect Thailand's different history and culture. (2) The clearer the attributes of the color landscape, the more pertinent they are to the images of the tourist destination. (3) The geographical environment, local religious beliefs, and tourists' expectations are the main motivating factors in choosing the main colors of a city. City color landscapes have become an important part of Thailand's city tourism "industry" and would promote the development of sustainable tourism.

What is attractive rural landscape? Differences in the social and expert assessment of the changes in the rural landscape of the Carpathian region in Poland with regard to the need of its protection

Contemporary villages of the mountain region are subject to uncontrolled structural and spatial transformations, which cause deformation of centuries-old spatial systems of high cultural and natural value. The aim of the study is to confront the opinions of the inhabitants and experts regarding the condition of the cultural landscape of the villages in south-eastern Poland. This area belongs to the Carpathian region of Central Europe. The historical and economic conditions of the studied region, related to the functioning in the post-war period, and then its breakdown and the development of the free market economy, constitute an interesting background for the proposed research. Local communities still remembering the period of difficulties related to the period of systemic transformations, are currently experiencing a relative prosperity, many difficulties related to the period of systemic transformations, are currently experiencing a relative prosperity, which is also expressed in a completely new, previously unknown way of managing the landscape. Investments implemented in villages are associated by the inhabitants with the improvement of the standards and quality of life. They assess them rather positively. An expert assessment of these landscape transformations indicates their negative dimension and the risk of losing timeless values. The discrepancy in the assessment of experts and local residents creates difficulties in the protection of the rural landscape. Therefore, high-quality visual landscape features among rural residents is necessary from the point of view of its multi-faceted and effective protection. Local initiatives and actions in the field of industry policy should play a significant role in this respect by consolidating the images of a harmonious landscape in the public awareness.

Local traditional ecological knowledge about hay management practices in wetlands of the Biebrza Valley, Poland

BACKGROUND

The Biebrza Valley is one of the largest complexes of wetlands (floodplain and percolation mire) and conservation sites in Central Europe. Local communities have managed the area extensively for subsistence and farming purposes for centuries; nonetheless, since the 1960s, hand mowing and livestock grazing have been gradually ceasing due to the intensification of farming, and wetlands have undergone natural succession. Currently, the protection of this vast ecosystem is challenging. Despite its remarkable cultural origin, the complexity of the traditional practices and knowledge of local people have never been studied comprehensively. Therefore, we found it urgent to explore if traditional ecological knowledge that could be used in conservation management of the area still exists among the local community.

METHODS

We interviewed 42 inhabitants of seven villages located in the Lower Basin of the Biebrza Valley (NE-Poland) in the consecutive years 2018-2020. We applied semi-structured, repeated interviews with farmers (aged 29-89), each lasting several hours. By using different ethnoecological methods (visual stimuli, walks in wetlands, co-mapping of the area), we explored traditional knowledge on the plants, landscape and traditional management of wetlands.

RESULTS

Farmers from the oldest generation, who used to manage wetlands with scythes, shared the deepest ecological knowledge. Local people divided wetlands into zones differentiated by vegetation type and hay quality. Depending on plant composition, people managed wetlands under a mixed regime: mowing once or twice a year during periods that ensured good hay quality and pasturing various livestock: cattle, horses, sheep, pigs and fowl. We identified at least 50 plant ethnospecies, which were described exhaustively by their habitat, morphological features, and mowing and grazing value.

CONCLUSIONS

The local community in the Biebrza Valley shared a deep traditional ecological knowledge and had a good memory of traditional farming practices. Research confirmed the unquestionable cultural origin of the local ecosystem, therefore in conservation endeavours the area should be treated first and foremost as a cultural landscape. The documented exceptional local perception of the wetland landscape, elements of traditional knowledge and complex farming practices should be considered for inclusion into conservation management, and cooperation with the local community should also be taken into account.

Challenges to Build up a Collaborative Landscape Management (CLM)-Lessons from a Stakeholder Analysis in Germany

Traditional cultural landscapes are of special value not only for reasons of nature conservation and high species diversity but also because they intersect with the identity of local communities, support recreation and tourism, and preserve cultural heritage. Structural changes in rural areas threaten these unique sceneries and environments in Europe and worldwide. As a result, the question of how to maintain and manage cultural landscapes where economic benefits are not assured has become a priority in science and in practice. Considering this context, community-based collaborative landscape management (CLM) can be considered an innovative and promising approach. This paper presents results from a stakeholder analysis examining the preconditions and opportunities for initiating a CLM in the biosphere reserve known as 'Spreewald'. The results indicate that due to the type of problem (landscape change)-which is characterised by complexity, beneficial linkages to a multitude of actor groups, and broad problem awareness-CLM appears to be feasible. However, other preconditions related to social relationships among actor groups, questions of legitimate coordination and the collaborative capacity of the community are not met, thus reducing the likelihood of success. To address these challenges, we discuss the potential of transdisciplinary processes (TD) to assist local communities in establishing such a collaborative problem-solving and management approach. We show that TD is highly valuable and supportive during this critical stage of emerging collaboration.

Tracing chronological shifts in farmland demarcation trees in southwestern Japan: implications from species distribution patterns, folk nomenclature, and multiple usage

BACKGROUND

Understanding the history of anthropogenic vegetation is often difficult due to the lack of tangible historical evidence. In this study, we examined chronological changes of farmland demarcation trees planted on alluvial plains along the Hijikawa River in southwestern Japan based on species distribution patterns, folk nomenclature, and multiple usage of the trees.

METHODS

The species composition of demarcation trees was investigated at 47 sites in 13 villages. We performed hierarchical clustering using Bray-Curtis measures to detect groups of similar tree composition and permutational multivariate analysis of variance to test whether differences in species composition correspond to village units. To better understand the traditional knowledge of demarcation trees, we conducted interviews with 53 farmers, most of whom were over 60 years old.

RESULTS

Clustering resulted in six tree composition groups. The group characterized by the most frequently planted species, Chaenomeles speciosa, dominated around lower reach villages. The group characterized by Euonymus japonicus dominated around middle reach villages, and that characterized by Salix pierotii was mainly located around upper reach villages. Chaenomeles speciosa was always identified with the standard Japanese name boke or similar names. Euonymus japonicus and several other species were also called boke by many farmers. Several elderly farmers stated that C. speciosa was pervasive in upper and middle reach villages in their youth, suggesting the prototypical use of C. speciosa in the study area. In addition, some minor species were likely to have been left after commercial crop production or subsistence use between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, including Morus sp. and Celtis sinensis for sericulture, Salix koriyanagi for fiber production, and Gardenia jasminoides for food coloration. The name kōshin bana recorded for E. japonicus suggests that the species' use originated from the folk faiths Kōshin-shinkō and/or Shōmen-Kongō.

CONCLUSIONS

The composition of demarcation trees in the region has not been stable over time, but instead changed to reflect the local livelihood, industry, and faiths. Despite the lack of tangible historical evidence, the spatial distribution patterns, folk nomenclature, and traditional knowledge of plants can provide clues to trace the chronological background of ecotopes in anthropogenic landscapes.

Frozen Histories or Narratives of Change? Contextualizing Land-Use Dynamics for Conservation of Historical Rural Landscapes

Current research has identified extensive changes in land-use structure and land management of Central European rural landscapes due to shifting political and economic trajectories. These changes are exemplified by diverse processes of agricultural intensification, privatization and land fragmentation, land abandonment and overall changes in modes of production. The extensive record of these historically specific processes has posed a fundamental challenge for rural landscape conservation, which is addressed in this paper. First, we identify the key contradictions in rural landscape conservation, which include (i) conservation based on cultural versus environmental/ecological values, (ii) conservation based on spatial landscape patterns versus individual landscape features, and (iii) conservation based on the preservation of past landscapes versus conservation that also address the processes of change. Subsequently, we use a case study of an existing open-air museum in Zubrnice, northern Czechia, to analyze and discuss these dichotomies. In this regional case study, we first contextualize the land-use/land-cover change (LULC) reconstructed from old maps using a thorough archive (documentary proxies) and field research (survey of agrarian terraces, clearance cairns, and remnants of orchards) that enabled the construction of a narrative of specific landscape structures and features. Finally, we integrate the collected data with a novel methodological approach that allow for the spatial identification of the landscape segments that represent the narratives of historical change in modes of rural production and are therefore suitable for integration within the existing open-air museum to improve its conservation and education status.

Losing a heritage hedgerow landscape. Biocultural diversity conservation in a changing social-ecological Mediterranean system

Traditional rural landscapes host a biocultural heritage acquired by rural societies, developed in a secular adaptation with nature. Hedgerows play a key role in preserving biocultural diversity and associated ecosystem services. Despite their benefits, in some European regions inappropriate hedge management has led to a drastic degradation of hedgerows, with significant effects on natural and biocultural diversity, landscape connectivity and sustainable flow of ecosystem services. In Central Spain, an ancient hedgerow landscape constitutes a valuable natural and cultural heritage recognized by the establishment of different protection categories. We quantify the main tendency of change of this landscape over time, detecting a process of rural social-ecological decoupling both inside and outside protected areas. The hedgerow network has progressively been degraded and destructured together with the decline and local extinction of woody species, all of them of traditional use and some recorded in red lists for species conservation. This reveals weaknesses in the design and management plans of protected areas that should be effective in conserving the heritage of cultural landscapes and their valuable biocultural diversity and provision of ecosystem services. There is a need to elaborate regulations for the protection of hedgerow landscapes in the Spanish legislation, based on social-ecological relationships.

Traditional Livelihoods, Conservation and Meadow Ecology in Jiuzhaigou National Park, Sichuan, China

Jiuzhaigou National Park (JNP) is a site of global conservation significance. Conservation policies in JNP include the implementation of two national reforestation programs to increase forest cover and the exclusion of local land-use. We use archaeological excavation, ethnographic interviews, remote sensing and vegetation surveys to examine the implications of these policies for non-forest, montane meadows. We find that Amdo Tibetan people cultivated the valley for >2,000 years, creating and maintaining meadows through land clearing, burning and grazing. Meadows served as sites for gathering plants and mushrooms and over 40 % of contemporary species are ethnobotanically useful. Remote sensing analyses indicate a substantial (69.6 %) decline in meadow area between 1974 and 2004. Respondents report a loss of their "true history" and connections to the past associated with loss of meadows. Conservation policies intended to preserve biodiversity are unintentionally contributing to the loss of these ecologically and culturally significant meadow habitats.