Tobias Plieninger

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen | GAUG · Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development

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...

Inclusive conservation approaches that effectively conserve biodiversity while improving human well-being are gaining traction in the face of the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. Despite much theorization on the governance of inclusive conservation, empirical research on its practical implementation is urgently needed. Here, using a correlati...

Conservation agriculture (CA) is the key agricultural soil management approach for Mediterranean rainfed systems facing extreme droughts and soil degradation. Yet, CA uptake and applicability is still marginal and disputed in the Mediterranean region, where smallholder farmers are most representative. Lack of widespread adoption of CA in the Medite...

The Mediterranean region is facing major challenges for soil conservation and sustainable agriculture. Conservation agriculture (CA), including reduced soil disturbance, can help conserve soils and improve soil fertility, but its adoption in the Mediterranean region is limited. Examining farmers’ perceptions of soil and underlying sociocultural fac...

Context The management of Portuguese agroforestry landscapes is currently focused on specialised cork and cattle production. Sustainable landscape management is increasingly discussed as an effective option to foster the multifunctionality of these landscapes. Such management requires consideration of multiple values connected to the landscape and...

Ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure are often discussed for their potential to address the societal challenges of urbanization. However, green infrastructure, particu- larly small-scale types (e.g. trees), is vulnerable to loss through urbanization and is often passed over during scientific investigations. Studies on the perceptions...

Small-scale private forests cover large areas in Europe and often contain structures and habitats of high nature conservation value that are increasingly put under pressure due to a rising interest in fuelwood and wood products. We investigate the distribution of variables like living tree and deadwood volumes, management intensity, diversity and d...

Die europäische FFH-Richtlinie (Richtlinie 92/43/EWG) von 1992 soll die Biodiversität in Europa unter anderem durch ein EU-weites Schutzgebietsnetz „Natura 2000“ fördern. Durch den föderalistischen Aufbau in Deutschland hat jedes Bundesland eigene Strategien entwickelt, um die FFH-Richtlinie rechtlich umzusetzen und Betreuungsmodelle für die Gebiet...

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...

Tobias Plieninger has contributed to framing Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) by his studies in Europe and Asia from forest to agricultural ecosystems. He introduced how the term of CES as a part of ecosystem services was raised by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment but largely neglected at the beginning. From his projects, he explored how to set...

This article sheds light on the complex interaction between humans and the natural world, as well as the significance of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) in interpreting this bond. CES refers to the non-material and immaterial benefits that nature gives to human society, including nature-based tourism, landscape aesthetics, sense of place, cultura...

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...

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...

Against a background of intensifying climate-induced disturbances, the need to enhance the resilience of forests and forest management is gaining urgency. In forest management, multiple trade-offs exist between different demands as well as across and within temporal and spatial scales. However, methods to assess resilience that consider these trade...

Rapid urbanization increases pressure on extracting construction materials through quarrying, which is disrupting and re-making places worldwide. In this study, we examine how people's place making and sense of place are reconfigured through quarrying. Taking a case study approach, we investigate perceptions of sense of place after quarrying and so...

Small-scale private forests cover large areas in Europe and often contain structures and habitats of high nature conservation value that are increasingly put under pressure due to a rising interest in fuelwood and wood products. We investigate the distribution of variables like living wood and deadwood volumes, management intensity, diversity and d...

Studies on cultural ecosystem services (CES) in urban forests using Public Participation GIS mapping are a well-established field of research. However, far fewer studies do exist that also illuminate perceived disservices, thus omitting an important part of human-forest relation- ships. Advancing knowledge on unpleasant places can promote outdoor r...

ABSTRACT Long-term livestock grazing has shaped landscapes, biodiversity, societies, cultures, and economies in the North Atlantic over time. However, overgrazing has become a major environmental sustainability challenge for this region, covering the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Scotland. The objective of this study was to elicit...

As Natura 2000 missed challenges of halting biodiversity decline, its' management is being affected by factors of ecological, political, and economic character. To address the shortcomings revealed during the Fitness Check and to facilitate meeting the EU's biodiversity targets, the European Commission developed an "Action Plan for Nature, People a...

Restflächen ehemaliger agroforstlicher Nutzungssysteme im Wald, insbesondere Hutewälder, nehmen durch den Wegfall der historischen Nutzung zusammen mit ihrer schützenswerten Biodiversität an spezialisierten Tier- und Pflanzenarten sowie Alt- und Lichtwaldstrukturen immer weiter ab. Dieser Abnahmeprozess ist weitgehend irreversibel, da die meisten F...

The development of societies, including spiritual development, is closely connected to forests. The larger interrelations among changing societies, transforming forest landscapes, and evolving spiritual values related to forests have yet to be extensively considered. Addressing this research gap is important to avoid the neglect of spiritual values...

Comparing the impacts of future scenarios is essential for developing and guiding the political sustainability agenda. This review-based analysis compares six IPBES scenarios for their impacts on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 20 biodiversity targets (Aichi targets) for the Europe and Central Asia regions. The comparison is based on a...

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...

Trees are key elements of urban green infrastructure and provide multiple ecosystem services that are essential for the quality of life of people in urban environments. Grey infrastructure is made up of buildings or built-up area, generally characterized by imperviousness of the surface. The complexity of urban green and grey infrastructure and the...

Wildfires are increasing in severity, and magnitude in the Mediterranean Basin in recent years, reaching a yearly average of 450 000 ha over the last decade. Drivers include climate change, land-use change, and land abandonment. Wildfire mitigation requires landscape-level action as impact to each parcel is affected by the conditions of the others....

Europe's forest provide multiple ecosystem services for societies, ranging from provisioning (e.g. wood) and regulating (e.g. climate mitigation and biodiversity) to cultural (e.g. recreation) services. In this paper, we assess the state and prospects of forest ecosystem services provision in Europe, introducing new data from the European collabora...

A very severe drought, early in the growing season, engulfed Morocco this year. This is not the first, but one in a series of dry years. Many farmers already used up their financial reserves, and it remains unclear how they will cope yet again. This essay combines photography with short interviews to recognise the implications of drought for Moroc...

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...

作为在社会 - 生态系统可持续发展研究领域颇具国际影响力的学者,普利宁格教授基于地中海区域对文化景观保护、农业系统变迁、生态系统服务和可持续转型进行了深入的研究。 目前,在全球气候变暖、农村凋敝、农业人口外流、耕地抛荒和土地利用方式变更的背景下,他将人与自然、社会与生态互动的视角运用到农业系统的保护与可持续发展当中,把“人“的角色回嵌于人文干预的生态环境的系统性保护之中。他的学术思想同时兼具对可持续发展科学跨学科的理论探索和社会 - 生态系统保护的现实关照。在不同群体对农业文化遗产研究和保护的关注日益增多的契机下,与相关领域学者的经验交流尤为必要,普利宁格教授因此应邀接受了 2021 年 9 月 13 日的专访及之后的系列讨论,以自身的研究实践来回应可持续发展的时代命题。现将访谈辑录成稿并翻...

Restoring, maintaining, and developing green and blue infrastructure (GBI) in cities is a key strategy to safeguard ecosystem services and human well-being under conditions of rapid urbanization. Developing “blue infrastructure” is a new concept, but there are diverse historically grown water management systems that have the potential to inform con...

This paper analyses the occurrence of governance innovations for forest ecosystem service (FES) provision in the forestry sector in Europe and the factors that influence innovation development. Based on a European-wide online survey, public and private forest owners and managers representing different property sizes indicate what type of governance...

The Geographical Indications (GIs) scheme is the EU's primary policy tool for increasing the market values of geographically distinct food products. Although GIs are linked to the landscapes of food production, little is known about the social-ecological values they represent, mainly due to a lack of spatial data. In this study, we, therefore, mapp...

The Mediterranean Basin is a global biodiversity hotspot, but formal conservation approaches have not been wholly effective to halt species and ecosystem losses in this world region. There is wide agreement that maintaining traditional and diverse land-use systems is key to conserving biodiversity across the Mediterranean region. Biocultural approa...

Land abandonment is a process widespread in many regions of the world as a consequence of socio-economic conditions and changes on the use of land. Research has shown that land abandonment can have both positive and negative effects, depending on the local context, location and scale. Research has framed land abandonment either as an opportunity fo...

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...

Forests are key components of European multifunctional landscapes and supply numerous forest ecosystem services (FES) fundamental to human well-being. The sustainable provision of FES has the potential to provide responses to major societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, or rural development. To identify suitable strategies...

The draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework commits to achievement of equity and justice outcomes and represents a “relational turn” in how we understand inclusive conservation. Although “inclusivity” is drawn on as a means to engage diverse stakeholders, widening the framing of inclusivity can create new tensions with regard to how to manage...

Social-ecological interactions have been shown to generate interrelated and reoccurring sets of ecosystem services, also known as ecosystem service bundles. Given the potential utility of the bundles concept, along with the recent surge in interest it is timely to reflect on the concept, its current use and potential for the future. Based on our ec...

Over the past 25 years, the study of driving forces of landscape change has developed into a central theme in land change science by contributing to theory development, promoting the analysis of causation of change and gaining insights into how landscape development could be steered into a societally more desirable direction. Based on this progress...

Trees are key elements of urban green infrastructure and provide multiple ecosystem services that are essential for the quality of life of people in an urban environment. Grey infrastructure is made up of buildings or built-up area, generally characterized by imperviousness of the surface. The complexity of urban green and grey infrastructure and t...

The systematic designation of protected areas is a key strategy in modern biodiversity conservation. As for now, the Natura 2000 system of the European Union (EU) is the largest coordinated network of conservation areas worldwide. Since this scheme has a focus on forests, its effectiveness substantially depends on small-scale private forest owners...

Purpose of Review Ownership patterns and the associated management characteristics are related to forest structures, biodiversity patterns, and their conservation worldwide. A literature review on this topic is missing so far. We fill this gap with an emphasis on the temperate forests of Europe and North America. Mixed-ownership landscapes are the...

Traditional farming landscapes in South and Central Portugal, known as montados, are affected by global socioeconomic and biophysical pressures, putting the sustainability of the systems in jeopardy. Cork oak trees (Quercus suber L.) are characteristic features of these complex agro-silvo-pastoral agroforestry systems, delivering a globally importa...

Though urban land covers only around 0.5% of the Earth's terrestrial surface, urbanization often leads to significant changes in land use and land cover. However, knowledge on the ecological and social outcomes of urbanization is largely fragmented across a multitude of local-level studies. We synthesized the outcomes of urbanization on 15 ecologic...

Private forest owners are the main forest ownership group within Europe, and important conservation values have been found on their land. Yet, small plot sizes, societal heterogeneity, and structural changes impede developing and implementing effective conservation programs in private forests. We present a systematic literature review focusing on s...

Dehesas and montados are Mediterranean agroforestry systems characterized by scattered oak trees with an understory grazed extensively by livestock and, in some cases, periodically cropped. A long history of traditional management practices has created an open woodland widely recognized for rich biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. Concern...

Reversing the decline of biodiver-sity in European agricultural land-scapes is urgent. We suggest eightmeasures addressing politics, eco-nomics, and civil society to instigatetransformative changes in agricul-tural landscapes. We emphasizethe need for a well-informed societyand political measures promotingsustainable farming by combiningfood produc...

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....

Rural Europe encompasses a variety of landscapes with differing levels of forest, agriculture, and agroforestry that can deliver multiple ecosystem services (ES). Whilst provisioning and regulating ES associated with individual land covers are comparatively well studied, less is known about the associated cultural ES. Only seldom are provisioning,...

Global challenges ranging from climate change and ecological regime shifts to refugee crises and post-national territorial claims are rapidly moving ecosystem thresholds and altering the social fabric of societies worldwide. This book addresses the vital question of how to navigate the contested forces of stability and change in a world shaped by m...

Place-based research faces multiple threats, including both natural and global health hazards and political conflicts, which may disrupt fieldwork. The current COVID-19 pandemic shows how these threats can drastically affect social-ecological research activities given its engagement with different local stakeholders, disciplines, and knowledge syst...

Place-based research faces multiple threats, including both natural and global health hazards and political conflicts, which may disrupt fieldwork. The current COVID-19 pandemic shows how these threats can drastically affect social-ecological research activities given its engagement with different local stakeholders, disciplines, and knowledge syst...

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...

Nicht erst im Europäischen Jahr für Kulturerbe (2018) werden historische Landschaftsgärten und andere Kulturdenkmäler weniger als Kostenfaktor gesehen, sondern als Ressource, die als weicher Standortfaktor zu Wettbewerbsfähigkeit, Entstehung von Arbeitsplätzen und regionaler Entwicklung führt. Direkter ökonomischer Nutzen entsteht beispielsweise in...

Agroforestry landscapes are crucial to human wellbeing; however, they are in sharp decline across Europe. Improved understanding of the complexity of agroforestry landscapes within different biophysical, social-cultural, economic and governance contexts is essential for designing effective policy and management interventions that are more tightly a...

Sacred groves are under-researched in Muslim countries so that their overall contribution to biodiversity conservation remains unknown. We studied 22 sacred groves and 45 surrounding woodlands in Northern Zagros, Iran, to compare taxonomic diversity, vegetation composition, and the conservation status of plant species. Sacred groves had higher taxo...

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 protection and sustainable management of habitat trees is an integral part of modern forest nature conservation concepts such as retention forestry. Bats, cavity-nesting birds, arboreal marsupials, and many different saproxylic species depend on habitat trees and their great variety of microhabitats and old-growth characteristics. With a focus...

Sacred groves are important for the conservation of biodiversity in the Middle East, as more formal approaches to protected areas have often failed in this global biodiversity hotspot. This study aims to identify the most important social values, taboos and perceived threats around sacred groves in the Kurdistan province of Iran. We test whether va...

It is well known that both built and natural landscape features contribute to recreational values of forests. Insights on visual preferences and visitor behaviour are used to meet societal demands for outdoor recreation in forests. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the hierarchy of importance of landscape features that characterise the surro...

Most protected areas are managed based on objectives related to scientific ecological knowledge of species and ecosystems. However, a core principle of sustainability science is that understanding and including local ecological knowledge, perceptions of ecosystem service provision and landscape vulnerability will improve sustainability and resilien...

In the face of unsustainable land-use changes including intensified agricultural production and land abandonment, agroforestry systems have the potential to support a diversity of social and ecological functions in agricultural landscapes. Mediterranean agroforestry landscapes have been conserved through traditional practices, and new concepts are...