Landscape change: Plan or chaos?
Introduction
Landscapes are dynamic features which evolve almost continuously. These changes are seen and evaluated by man as improvement or deterioration of the previous or existing state. However, this judgement is mainly based upon a particular view of utility or in relation of achieving a particular goal or situation. Consequently, changes are not always perceived by all in the same way and positive and negative evaluations may be conflicting for the same type of change. In this paper, three questions are discussed: what is the nature of change in the landscape, what factors are involved, and how can changes of the landscape as a whole be measured in a structural way?
Section snippets
Change
Landscapes are the expression of the interaction between the natural environment and man's activities who tries to make his environment more suitable for his living and needs. Both the natural conditions and man's needs change in time and are controlled by different but highly interactive factors. In order to study change at least four questions should be considered:
- 1.
Change of what?
- 2.
What is the frequency of change?
- 3.
What is the magnitude of change?
- 4.
What reference time-base is used?
Landscapes are
Methods and study area
One important holistic property of landscape is the way its composing parts are organised in space. Complex spatial patterns are easily recognised by man and used to define landscape types and to evaluate them aesthetically. In general, completely chaotic or too strictly organised landscapes are disliked (Antrop, 1996). The degree of order perceived in the landscape is an important factor. Order, chaos and entropy are closely related concepts. The concept of entropy comes from the
Results and discussion
Two examples from different landscapes in north-eastern Flanders (Belgium) illustrate the possibilities of this method for monitoring changes of the overall holistic structural characteristic in different landscapes. Fig. 2 represents the evolution of the distribution of entropy since 1910 of the landscape in Destelbergen, based upon 104 transects. Destelbergen is a municipality that was gradually absorbed in the urban fringe of the city of Ghent. Fig. 3 shows the evolution of the distribution
Conclusion
The holistic overall change of a landscape is the result of complex interaction of more autonomous processes and planned actions by man. Autonomous processes are both natural ones as the result of the numerous individual, not concerted actions by man. The landscape changes accordingly in a somewhat chaotic way, while at certain times man tries to steer and (re)direct the evolution by planned actions. Studying and monitoring all the interfering changes that occur in the landscape is impossible.
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