Maria Garcia-Martin

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL | WSL · Landscape Dynamics Research Unit

Farming in Europe has been the scene of several important socio-economic and environmental developments and crises throughout the last century. Therefore, an understanding of the historical driving forces of farm change helps identifying potentials for navigating future pathways of agricultural development. However, long-term driving forces have so...

Rural abandonment is a significant process in the Mediterranean region, posing sustainability challenges for rural and urban areas. Although there is an increase in studies focusing on the ecological implications and impacts of land abandonment and the role of rewilding, there is a knowledge gap in the study of the socio-cultural dimension of aband...

Grünflächen und naturnahe Flächen sind für die Lebensqualität von wesentlicher Bedeutung, da sie sich positiv auf die Gesundheit und das Wohlbefinden auswirken. In der Schweiz leben heute ungefähr drei Viertel der Einwohner in Städten und Agglomerationen, daher ist die Qualität und Zugänglichkeit von Grün- und Naturräumen (GNR) von grossem Interess...

Landscape approaches are gaining momentum in both scientific and policy agendas. However, landscape approaches comprise a multitude of concepts, approaches and principles, which are in part similar, in some parts different or even contradictory. In this paper, we used a Q-method questionnaire to explore how landscape approaches are understood and e...

The human relationship with nature is a topic that has been explored throughout human history. More recently, the idea of connection to nature has merged as an important transdisciplinary field of study. Despite increased scholarly attention to connection to nature, the notion of disconnection from nature remains undertheorized and understudied. In...

Urban areas are constantly growing, and densification is a common strategy to limit settlement expansion. However, this leads to loss of green spaces (GSs) and increasing noise pollution, which is detrimental to public health. Within a research project that aims at elucidating the stress-easing potential of green spaces in noise-polluted environmen...

Globally, around 0.78 billion rural people live in close proximity to forests and have been considered “forest-dwelling” and/or “forest dependent”. Forest dependency has so far been mainly studied in material terms, while the non-material relationships to forests have been addressed less frequently. To fill this gap, the general objective of this s...

Landscape products link to low-input practices and traditional ecological knowledge, and have multiple functions supporting human well-being and sustainability. Here we explore seven landscape products worldwide to identify these multiple functions in the context of food commodification and landscape sustainability. We show that a landscape product...

Landscape products link to low-input practices and traditional ecological knowledge, and have multiple functions supporting human well-being and sustainability. Here we explore seven landscape products worldwide to identify these multiple functions in the context of food commodification and landscape sustainability. We show that a landscape product...

It has been shown that the COVID-19 pandemic affected some agricultural systems more than others, and even within geographic regions, not all farms were affected to the same extent. To build resilience of agricultural systems to future shocks, it is key to understand which farms were affected and why. In this study, we examined farmers' perceived r...

In this study, we bring together participatory mapping and analysis of geolocated social media content from the Flickr platform in an assessment of similarities and differences in their utility for landscape value elicitation. We do so in a Pan-European context comparing types of landscape values and their spatial patterns across 19 case sites in 1...

Participatory mapping is a useful approach to engage the general public and stakeholders to communicate place-based values, behaviour, preferences and observations. The approach informs social-ecological research and land-use planning. In land-use planning, PPGIS is applicable, for example, in initial phases or for assessing project outcomes. This...

Context Global dynamics affect the sustainability of agricultural landscapes, but these cross-scale connections are understudied. Therefore, we combine food systems and landscape ecology, focusing on food products that provide a linkage between global consumers and landscapes of production (e.g., Douro Valley wine) which we call landscape products....

Terraced systems are time-tested agricultural landscapes that host multiple societal values, but they are largely overlooked and challenged by land-use changes. We described and analysed the key elements and driving forces of change in a dryland terrace system in China through the narratives of 31 local farmers. We identified 16 key system elements...

Context Global dynamics affect the sustainability of agricultural landscapes, but these cross-scale connections are understudied. Therefore, we combine food systems and landscape ecology, focusing on food products that provide a linkage between global consumers and landscapes of production (e.g., Douro Valley wine) which we call landscape products....

The study of the evolution and change of landscapes' ecological conditions through history has fascinated professional and amateur scientists for centuries. However, the understanding of why these changes happen and what these changes fully entail is still an emerging field of research, which nowadays broadly covers the study of the evolution of la...

Current sustainability challenges demand approaches that acknowledge a plurality of human–nature interactions and worldviews, for which biocultural approaches are considered appropriate and timely. This systematic review analyses the application of biocultural approaches to sustainability in scientific journal articles published between 1990 and 20...

Landscapes are changing, with rural areas becoming increasingly urbanized. Children and adolescents are underrepresented in the sense-of-place literature. Our study aimed to understand how adolescent residents of a rural–urban transition area perceive and value their urbanizing landscape by examining sense of place and perceptions of landscape chan...

Multifunctional landscapes provide critical benefits and are essential for human well‐being. The relationship between multifunctional landscapes and well‐being has mostly been studied using ecosystem services as a linkage. However, there is a challenge of concretizing what human well‐being exactly is and how it can be measured, particularly in rela...

The aim of this perspective essay is to discuss how integrated landscape management (ILM) can contribute to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda in Europe. Challenges for sustainable development become evident in the emergence of land-use conflicts. Facing multiple, and in sometimes conflicting , land-use objectives...

Improved perceptions towards landscape stewardship, at the local level, could help achieve more sustainable futures. However, little research has been done on the dimensions of landscape stewardship underlying such perceptions. Here we look at the perception of landscape values, place attachment, awareness of the adverse consequences human action m...

The concept of landscape has been increasingly used, in the last decades, in policy and land use planning, both in regard to so-called “special” and to “ordinary” or “everyday” landscapes. This has raised the importance of local and public participation in all issues that refer to landscapes and the definition of the groups that “have a stake” in t...

A new paradigm in landscape management is needed as an alternative to the prevailing single-sector-oriented approaches that generally lead to mono-functional landscapes and a tendency towards disengagement and disaffection of people from them. This dissertation provides an overview of how integrated landscape management, on one hand, and personal i...

For landscape research to function in a democratic landscape governance, it must achieve two things. One, it must integrate stakeholder perspectives at multiple steps of the research process, and two, it must effectively communicate its knowledge and insights. Citizen science can be described as the involvement of the public in the scientific proce...

Context Cultural landscapes evolve over time. However, the rate and direction of change might not be in line with societal needs and more information on the forces driving these changes are therefore needed. Objectives Filling the gap between single case studies and meta-analyses, we present a comparative study of landscape changes and their drivin...

Context Human–nature interactions are reflected in the values people assign to landscapes. These values shape our understanding and actions as landscape cocreators, and need to be taken into account to achieve an integrated management of the landscape that involves civil society. Objectives The aim of this research was to increase the current knowl...

The overarching objective of HERCULES work package (WP) 6 is to develop visions for re-coupling social and ecological components in cultural landscapes and to translate them into policy and management options. Previous work in WP6 collected European examples of good practice in consideration of ecosystem services applied to cultural landscapes, and...