Adri van den Brink’s research while affiliated with Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and other places

Sustainable landscape development (SLD) has received much attention worldwide as a concept, linking landscape and sustainability science in spatial planning, landscape design and management. Using the Třeboň Basin in the Czech Republic as a case study – a landscape characterised by an artificial system of 460 fishponds – we explore the relationship between cultural heritage (CH) and SLD and how CH contributes to landscape change for SLD. We applied a narrative review methodology acknowledging ‘diffraction’ as a way of conceptualising how multiple elements and ways of ordering co-exist, e.g. the Třeboň Basin social-ecological system. Using scientific and grey literature we examined eight narratives, spanning from CH/nature conservation, flood retention, recreation to fish/agricultural production. These narratives emerged from tracing the development of this landscape since human settlement. We found that the Třeboň Basin has largely survived as a CH landscape into the 21st century because of the established infrastructure that is linked to multiple functions, uses and values of the fishponds and surrounding landscape. These functions and uses create multiple narratives that co-exist in the Třeboň Basin and are underpinned by CH values contributing to SLD. Our study recognises three pre-conditions to this inclusivity for SLD outcomes: These are: (1) embracing multifunctionality, (2) taking a multi-level collaborative landscape governance approach, and (3) encouraging adaptive landscape planning and management. Meeting these pre-conditions can connect and support the meta goals of SLD through regional and local actions in the Třeboň Basin, and also in other global, complex and contested landscapes.

The local implementation of renewable energy projects often faces opposition. The landscape transformation that comes with the transition to renewables is one of the key counter-arguments of local stakeholders. In this article, we examine the relation between research on ‘designing landscape transformations’ and ‘acceptance of renewable energy projects’; whether and how these bodies of knowledge may complement each other. The systematic literature review revealed that acceptance studies and landscape design studies describe 25 similar factors that influence acceptance. The majority of these factors are somewhat general in nature, such as economic benefits, visual impact, and aesthetics. Additionally, we found 45 unique factors in acceptance studies and sixteen unique factors in landscape design studies. Furthermore, we found differences in distribution of factors when categorizing and comparing them by means of two conceptual frameworks. Moreover, the emphasis in peer-reviewed literature differs significantly from laypersons, which is challenging the current research agenda on landscape transformation and acceptance of renewable energy. The findings and the knowledge lacunas provide clear avenues for a shared research agenda. Future research needs to examine the influence of involving landscape designers on the acceptance of renewable energy projects and the effects of more inclusive design processes on factors such as trust.

Development of ground-mounted solar power plants (SPP) is no longer limited to remote and low population density areas, but arrives in urban and rural landscapes where people live, work and recreate. Societal considerations are starting to change the physical appearance of SPPs, leading to so-called multifunctional SPPs. In addition to electricity production, multifunctional SPP produce food, deliver benefits for flora and fauna, mitigate visual impact or preserve cultural heritage. In this paper, we systematically examine the different spatial configurations of multifunctional SPPs that reflect a range of contemporary societal considerations. The purpose of this research is to create and test an SPP typology that can support evidence-based and transparent decision-making processes, from location finding to implementation. Comparative case analysis, expert interviews and questionnaires are used to distinguish different types of SPP. We propose a typology that consists of four dimensions: energy, economic, nature and landscape. These dimensions lead to three main types of multifunctional SPP: mixed-production, nature-inclusive, landscape-inclusive, and their combinations. This typology supports decision-making processes on solar power plants and adds to the existing (solar) energy landscape vocabulary. In doing so, the research supports the transformation of energy systems in a way that meets both the quantitative goals and qualitative considerations by society.

p>Landscape architects play important roles in addressing societal challenges. To successfully address these challenges, this essay argues that they need to expand their understanding of boundaries and engage in boundary thinking. Distinguishing between physical, mental and socially constructed boundaries, we characterise boundary thinking as a creative process and productive motive in designing landscapes. Subsequently, we present four types of boundary-spanning roles for landscape architects to perform—the subject-based designer, the visionary narrator, the process-based designer, and the design-led entrepreneur—and point to the cognitive and social capacities needed to play any of these roles. We propose for landscape architecture to consider boundary thinking in agenda setting discourses and to include boundary spanning into practice. We suggest three avenues to pursue in realising professional opportunities: exploring the roles landscape architects play, understanding the environment that enables boundary-spanning work, and developing boundary theory in landscape architectural research.</p

Assessing the impact of water erosion events can provide valuable information for sustainable land management. The Czech Republic's Monitoring Erosion of Agricultural Land program only records erosion events that exceed certain thresholds of erosion tolerance criteria (percentage of affected plot area, quantities of eroded soil, other material damages) as determined by trained authorized employees of land offices. The main goal of this study was to identify major socio-economic characteristics that have promoted the occurrence of water erosion events in the Czech Republic. For this purpose, two variables of erosion event occurrence and event frequency were tested using the data set of 1594 erosion events from 2011 to 2019 in the Czech Republic. Accordingly, five site characteristics and five farm characteristics were examined to determine factors affecting the occurrence of erosion. Results showed that two characteristics (plot size and land tenure) have been confirmed as significant predictors of repeated erosion events (plots with as many as 8 separate erosion events were recorded). The results also showed that there is still a need for strong protection of soil against erosion. Therefore, we recommend that selected systemic measures in the form of agri-environmental standards (GAEC) should be updated to facilitate stricter soil protection in the long-term EU budget. These findings have enabled us to formulate practical recommendations for more effective protection of agricultural land against water erosion.

Ageing infrastructures and changing landscapes offer opportunities for renewal and adaptation. While traditionally seen as separate challenges, we think the integration of landscape and infrastructural renewal can bring about solutions better tailored to future needs. This paper provides a conceptual framework, called Infrascape, that can study and explain the interdependent infrastructure-landscape relationship. The Infrascape framework uses coevolution to combine nested levels of infrastructure (object, network, system) with a pattern-process perspective on landscape. We explored the analytical abilities of this framework in a case study of the Danube river landscape near Vienna, Austria. In our case study, the Infrascape framework helped identify multiple instances of coevolution between infrastructure and landscape. The coevolution of infrastructure and landscape featured in the Infrascape framework, clarifies the reciprocal implications of infrastructural renewal for landscape transformations and vice versa. As such, Infrascape forms an important contribution to the study and development of renewal strategies for sustainable infrastructure landscapes.

In many Western countries, flood policy is transitioning from a focus on technical flood defence measures towards more holistic and integrated flood risk management approaches. In this article, we explore the boundary spanning role of landscape architects in integrated flood risk management projects. The central research question is: what are the boundary spanning activities and roles that landscape architects perform and which factors are conditional to these activities? We have studied the boundary spanning behaviour of landscape architects in the Dutch 'Room for the River' programme. This programme had a dual objective of improving simultaneously the water safety and the spatial quality of the Dutch riverine areas. We conducted a comparative, in-depth case study of three 'Room for the River' projects, and investigated conditions that stimulated or frustrated the work of landscape architects in establishing safe solutions with spatial quality. We found that the landscape architects involved in these projects played various boundary spanning roles. We conclude that, depending on the conditional factors, their roles ranged from more traditional content-oriented domain expert/scout to the more innovative organisational expert/task coordinator. For successful boundary spanning, although cognitive capacities (e.g., knowledge about landscape) are important, landscape architects also need to have the appropriate social capacities (e.g., social-emotional competences, networking skills). That is, the work of the landscape architects essentially includes drawing lines that sketch the contours of future landscapes; but to do so, they must also cross the lines between the various actors, organizations, and disciplines involved.

Despite rising attention to pathways thinking in multiple domains such as climate adaptation, energy supply planning, and flood risk management, their spatial translation is so far understudied. We set out to study how spatial design based on pathways thinking can help develop more adaptive and sustainable landscapes. Using landscape analysis, field research, and research-through-designing in a case study on climate resilience in Boston (USA), we argue for better understanding of the spatial and design consequences of pathways in general. Our results indicate that pathways can be spatially translated, demanding landscape-informed choices when sequencing different policy actions. We found that spatial designing makes the landscape consequences of pathways transparent and enables policy-makers to replace the input of policy actions with spatial interventions, select pathways according to different underlying design strategies, use the mapped pathways to initiate an iterative research-through-designing process to test and inform different designs, and spatially visualize the pathways and possible sequences of actions. We conclude that policy-makers should be cognizant about the spatial implications of pathways and offer directions to enrich applications of pathways thinking for achieving adaptive and sustainable landscapes.

In view of the need to adapt to uncertain climate change through spatial interventions, this article explores how spatial planners might navigate amid uncertainty. To draw out insights for planning, we examine planning frameworks which explicitly recognise uncertainty and uncertainty descriptions from studies in environmental risk and climate uncertainty. We build our case by addressing the implications of different characteristics of uncertainty and describe how planners can handle uncertainty based on the nature, level and location of uncertainty. We argue that a plural–unequivocal characterisation of uncertainty helps planners in their search for adequate and warranted interventions amid uncertainty.