Landscape monitoring for improving resource management

Sebastian Eiter, NIBIO – Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, sebastian.eiter@nibio.no

Wendy Fjellstad, NIBIO – Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, wendy.fjellstad@nibio.no

Grete Stokstad, NIBIO – Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, grete.stokstad@nibio.no

Summary

This session invites papers presenting results from long-term landscape monitoring efforts, either at regional, national or international levels (e.g. LUCAS, OECD). Approaches are welcome from a variety of policy sectors (agriculture, forestry, environment, etc.) and from different scientific disciplines, such as geography, ecology, sociology, economics, cultural heritage and spatial planning.

Description

Driven by population growth and economic development, human activities are changing our landscapes at ever increasing rates. These changes affect the goods and services provided by landscapes, as well as fundamentally altering landscape character. In several countries, long-term monitoring programmes have been established to measure land use changes and the implications they have for issues such as biodiversity, cultural heritage, recreation and tourism, agriculture, forestry, urbanisation and rural viability.

Papers presented in this session should focus on how the monitoring data are used to provide feedback to policy makers and other stakeholders, and how this contributes to more sustainable resource management. We are particularly interested in contributions that demonstrate integration across multiple themes.

What can participants expect to learn?

The symposium will provide an arena for exchange of experiences with a variety of methods for landscape monitoring and communication of results to public administration such as policy makers, and other stakeholders. Ideally, international exchange will inspire participants for how to adjust, supplement and improve national monitoring methods and means of result communication.

Impact 

Primarily, participants shall communicate ideas from other countries they consider innovative to their national administrations and stakeholders, in order to optimize efficiency and effectiveness during the national monitoring processes, from method design and data collection to policy implementation.

Moreover, it will depend on the motivation of the participants how far the papers presented could be collected in a special issue of a scientific journal with peer-review or in a more technical report edited by one or several home institutions of presenters.