The Role of Geographical Landscape Studies for Sustainable Territorial Planning
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sustainability Discussion The Role of Geographical Landscape Studies for Sustainable Territorial Planning Iván Franch-Pardo 1,* ID , Brian M. Napoletano 2,* ID , Gerardo Bocco 2, Sara Barrasa 2 ID and Luis Cancer-Pomar 3 ID 1 Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores Morelia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Morelia, 58190 Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico 2 Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Morelia, 58190 Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico; [email protected] (G.B.); [email protected] (S.B.) 3 Department of Physical Geography and CEACTierra, University of Jaen, 23071 Jaen, Spain, [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] (I.F.-P.); [email protected] (B.M.N.) Received: 12 September 2017; Accepted: 7 November 2017; Published: 17 November 2017 Abstract: One of the primary objectives of physical geography is to determine how natural phenomena produce specific territorial patterns. Therefore, physical geography offers substantial scientific input into territorial planning for sustainability. A key area where physical geography can contribute to land management is in the delimitation of landscape units. Such units are fundamental to formal socio-economic zoning and management in territorial planning. However, numerous methodologies—based on widely varying criteria—exist to delineate and map landscapes. We have selected five consolidated methodologies with current applications for mapping the landscape to analyse the different role of physical geography in each: (1) geomorphological landscape maps based on landforms; (2) geosystemic landscape maps; (3) Landscape Character Assessment; (4) landscape studies based on visual landscape units; (5) landscape image-pair test. We maintain that none of these methodologies are universally applicable, but that each contributes important insights into landscape analysis for land management within particular biogeophysical and social contexts. This work is intended to demonstrate that physical geography is ubiquitous in contemporary landscape studies intended to facilitate sustainable territorial planning, but that the role it plays varies substantially with the criteria prioritized. Keywords: environmental geography; landscape delimitation and mapping; geomorphology; geosystem-territory-landscape; viewshed; Landscape Character Assessment; image-pair test; territorial planning 1. Introduction Sustainability is primarily concerned with environmental change, but is increasingly recognised as an inherently political concept, both in its formulation and implications [1]. In the sense of sustainable human-development, it is based on three overlapping concerns (see Figure1): (1) environmental change and its anthropogenic drivers and adaptation thereto; (2) poverty and other forms of economic inequality [2,3]; and (3) injustice, power disparities, and the gap between really existing democracy and its popular definition, particularly with respect to management of and access to material resources [4,5]. This conception of sustainability as an integrating concept, in turn, has drawn attention to the need to address the ontological and epistemological disciplinary gaps between the social and natural sciences to adequately understand the social production and consumption of scientific knowledge and the complex relationships between humans, social systems, and their biogeophysical reality [1,6]. Sustainability 2017, 9, 2123; doi:10.3390/su9112123 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2017, 9, 2123 2 of 23 consumption of scientific knowledge and the complex relationships between humans, social Sustainability 2017, 9, 2123 2 of 23 systems, and their biogeophysical reality [1,6]. Figure 1. Sustainability at the intersection of efforts to address environmental change, social justice, and economic equality. Recent scholarshipscholarship regarding regarding the the epistemology epistemology of geography of geography contends contends that it playsthat anit importantplays an roleimportant in sustainability role in sustainability science owing science to its owing inclusive to its approach inclusive to humanapproach and to physicalhuman factorsand physical when dealingfactors when with territorialdealing with studies territorial [2] and studies the landscape [2] and the as anlandscape integrating as an concept integrating [7]. 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In and terms physical of more geography pragmatic is therefore concerns consistent with territorial with managementpositions that and mandate planning the studiesintegration for sustainability,of the natural thisand positionsocial sciences, is considered particularly to be essential with regards [21–23 to]. socialThe and purpose ecological of thissustainability review is [14,19,20]. to highlight In theterms different of more ways pragmatic in which concerns physical with and territorial human geographymanagement are integratedand planning in landscape studies studiesfor sustainability, for sustainable this territorial position management—i.e., is considered land-use to be planningessential [21–23]. and its implementation—by considering the role of physical geography (PG) in five Sustainability 2017, 9, 2123 3 of 23 widely used geographical approaches to landscape mapping. The work reviewed here