scholarly journals The study of rural landscape at the farm scale: changes in traditional signs and structures

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2s) ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Ludwiczak ◽  
S. Benni ◽  
P. Tassinari

The importance of cultural, historical and identity values of traditional rural landscapes is widely acknowledged in the relevant scientific fields and in legislation. Furthermore, the knowledge of their evolution represents a fundamental basis in order to manage landscape transformations appropriately. The work is part of a broader research aimed at developing and testing a method for the systematic high time and spatial resolution assessment of changes in traditional rural landscape signs. We describe here the main phases of this original quantitative method and a summary of the first results over an Italian case study. A set of parameters allows to provide complementary information about the evolution of the main characters of rural settlements and their components. This proves to be essential to achieve a deep understanding of the traditional physiognomy of places, and to support landscape management and restoration, and the definition of transformation projects.

Author(s):  
Vilma Karvelyte-Balbieriene ◽  
Indre Grazuleviciute-Vileniske

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical, cultural, and social significance and the role in landscapes of Lithuanian villages with churches and to formulate the hypothetical framework for their revitalization and consequent sustainable development of country's rural landscape. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology of the research encompassed the desktop study (analysis of literature, archival data, maps, and statistical data) and the analyses on site (observation, measurements, and recording in photographs of buildings and urban structures). Findings – The findings of the research include the analysis of the historical development of country's rural settlements with the religious function, formulation of the notion of the contemporary village with church, identification of the contemporary network of country's villages with churches and analysis of their current socioeconomic and sociocultural situation and the role in rural landscape. The results of the analyses were used formulating the hypothetical framework for the revitalization of the villages with churches and the sustainable development of the rural landscape. Originality/value – The analysis of literature demonstrated that Lithuanian villages with churches and their significance for the sustainable development of country's rural landscape are paradoxically neglected subjects. Meanwhile, the foreign experience has demonstrated that historic rural settlements, including the settlements with the religious function, are important not only as separate cultural assets but also can play an important role in the identity, viability, and the sustainable development of rural landscapes. Thus the findings of the research demonstrating the peculiarities and potential of Lithuanian villages with churches can be used in the fields of heritage preservation, landscape management, and rural development.


Author(s):  
Agnieszka Jaszczak ◽  
Katarina Kristianova ◽  
Gintarė Vaznonienė ◽  
Jan Zukovskis

The problem examined in this research is how the loss of rural settlements, small towns, villages and farms contributes to changes in rural landscape and how can this change be managed? The survey was conducted in matching locations in Poland, Slovakia, Germany and in the southern part of Cyprus. The research methods were based on the analysis of source materials and on field analyses in the studied regions. Source research included searching for information in a literature on the subject, as well as planning documents, strategies and studies of spatial development conditions. The main causes of the decline of abandoned rural areas are the decrease in population and migration to cities, the intensification of production and the increase in production areas and the change in the nature of the activities of rural homesteads. The results of the research also show that in addition to common trends comprising the transformation of landscapes in rural areas, each of the analyzed regions differs in terms of the degree of adverse changes, the period in which changes were noted and the possibilities to prevent these changes. In order to prepare a village rehabilitation strategy, a comprehensive diagnosis of whole changes is required, in which the state and causes of landscape changes are determined, and possible solutions for halting rural depopulation are foreseen.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 3834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Di Fazio ◽  
Giuseppe Modica

This paper focuses on the historic and cultural dimension of landscape, in relation to the holistic and dynamic approach today required in landscape research. In this direction, the Authors investigate the present role played by historical rural landscapes in relation to their multifaceted character and function. In recent years there has been an ever-growing appreciation of their cultural value, depending on the differential speed of environmental change (relatively high) and people’s adaptation to it (relatively slow), as a matter of compensation. Although reference is often made to the global and the European contexts, Italy is given special attention, since the long history of civilization known by its rural landscapes makes them particularly worthy of consideration and offers a wide variety of examples assuming a more general interest. The main changes occurred in the Italian rural landscapes over the last two centuries are described by referring to their main causes and to the parallel change observed in the urban-rural dialectic. The notion of “cultural landscape”, as it emerges from the international debate and documents, is applied to historic rural landscapes, according to a varied range of conditions and characteristics. Knowledge, identification, interpretation and characterization are fundamental actions to define sustainable landscape management strategies. These last should be diversified according to landscape character, functionality, integrity and obsolescence, not being limited to outstanding landscapes only but considering all rural landscapes as heritage. To this end, heritage strategies and policies must go together with agricultural sectorial policies, since agriculture and farmers are the major actors of rural landscape protection and transformation. EU Common Agricultural Policy is considered by focusing on its effect on rural landscape and proposals coming from the heritage experts for its future implementation are examined. Emerging strategic measures and action criteria are singled out and presented. In any case, to protect historic rural landscapes, balanced change-dynamics and development vitality should be strengthened if present, introduced if not, so as to assure resilience. Neo-rurality today expresses the search for sustainable lifestyles, green development models and a better quality of life, implicitly offering new opportunities for the revitalisation of historic rural landscapes. Finally, a holistic approach and multidisciplinary cooperation are needed to allow for an effective synthesis of the many cultural visions, which today concern the theme of landscape.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2s) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Diti ◽  
Daniele Torreggiani ◽  
Patrizia Tassinari

The paper presents a methodology aimed at supporting the rural planning process. The analysis of the state of the art of local and regional policies focused on rural and suburban areas, and the study of the scientific literature in the field of spatial analysis methodologies, have allowed the definition of the basic concept of the research. The proposed method, developed in a GIS, is based on spatial metrics selected and defined to cover various agricultural, environmental, and socio-economic components. The specific goal of the proposed methodology is to identify homogeneous extra-urban areas through their objective characterization at different scales. Once areas with intermediate urban-rural characters have been identified, the analysis is then focused on the more detailed definition of periurban agricultural areas. The synthesis of the results of the analysis of the various landscape components is achieved through an original interpretative key which aims to quantify the potential impacts of rural areas on the urban system. This paper presents the general framework of the methodology and some of the main results of its first implementation through an Italian case study.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Hugo Oliveira ◽  
Gil Penha-Lopes

AbstractSouthern European countries face a panorama of rural landscape abandonment, ageing rural population and lack of opportunities for vibrant rural lifestyles. This lead the way for over-exploitative monocultural practices and widespread abandonment of traditional land management practices, intensifying the degradation of rural landscapes, suffering already from the impacts of climate change and global economic pressures. Although policy driven initiatives can scale solutions to have wider impact, if not attuned to local contexts they can also increase the problems felt at the local level. Highlighting local grassroots innovations and locally appropriate solutions can support such attunement. Community-led grassroots initiatives have been sprouting, wishing to regenerate their landscapes grounded on ecocentric ethical approaches to Neo-rural lifestyles. Within Portugal, Permaculture, as a landscape ecological design movement and practice, has been one of those approaches, activated by young citizens wishing to recreate and innovate alternatives for the sustainable management of land, associated with lifestyle choices and local entrepreneurship. With this article, using a socio-ecological inventory as a baseline exploratory study, we are aiming to identify and start characterizing, the Permaculture landscape ecological design movement in Portugal, the motivations and perceptions of such movement, and its contribution towards the transformation of landscape management, societal trends and ecocentric innovations, to create more sustainable socio-ecological rural livelihoods within a Portuguese context.


Author(s):  
Edgars Rencis ◽  
Janis Barzdins ◽  
Sergejs Kozlovics

Towards Open Graphical Tool-Building Framework Nowadays, there are many frameworks for developing domain-specific tools. However, if we want to create a really sophisticated tool with specific functionality requirements, it is not always an easy task to do. Although tool-building platforms offer some means for extending the tool functionality and accessing it from external applications, it usually requires a deep understanding of various technical implementation details. In this paper we try to go one step closer to a really open graphical tool-building framework that would allow both to change the behavior of the tool and to access the tool from the outside easily. We start by defining a specialization of metamodels which is a great and powerful facility itself. Then we go on and show how this can be applied in the field of graphical domain-specific tool building. The approach is demonstrated on an example of a subset of UML activity diagrams. The benefits of the approach are also clearly indicated. These include a natural and intuitive definition of tools, a strict logic/presentation separation and the openness for extensions as well as for external applications.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan García-Haro ◽  
Josep Roca

<p>In recent years, the use of remote sensed NDVI has become recurrent in urban studies regarding the adaptation of cities to climate change. However, due to the physical diversity within cities and the different resolution offered by the sensors, the territorial interpretation of what the NDVI values really mean becomes difficult. Where the larger the size of the cells of the image, the greater the number of elements of the built environment within it, and the more complex the interpretation becomes.</p><p>In this work, the relationship between the NDVI of three sensors with different cell resolution for the same location and date is studied. In particular, the city of Granollers in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona is analyzed. First, the NDVI images were obtained from Landsat-8 with 30m resolution, Sentinel-2 with 10m and from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food of Catalonia (DARP) with 0.125m resolution. Then, the comparison was performed with a sample of five different typologies of the territory: dense urban core, suburban, industrial, area of highway and rural.</p><p>As first results, a supervised classification of the DARP image allowed the definition of 0.30 as the precise minimum value of NDVI that indicates the actual presence of vegetation. On the other hand, the comparison indicates that, in the urban context, the larger the cell size, the presence of vegetation quality is overestimated, where the higher percentage of cells is concentrated in higher NDVI values than in those with lower resolution. However, this behavior is not appreciated in rural areas, where higher percentages of cells of different resolutions were concentrated in the same NDVI ranges.</p><p>In such a way, it is corroborated that it is in the urban context where this indicator has a greater difficulty of territorial interpretation. Statements that are analyzed in greater depth in this study, where its implications in the use of NDVI in urban studies for the adaptation of cities to climate change are discussed.</p>


Author(s):  
Viacheslav Politanskyi ◽  
Dmytro Lukianov ◽  
Hanna Ponomarova ◽  
Oleh Gyliaka

The article examines the characteristics of the functioning of information security in the e-government system, a phenomenon that is only possible based on the development of the information security infrastructure. The authors analyze information security as a key element of the concept of e-government, as well as various interpretations and ways of explaining the concept of information security. The research team's approach to the definition of the concept of information security is formed from the deep understanding of this concept, in terms of general theoretical analysis. Topics, objects, functions, types, principles, forms, levels of provision and structural elements of information security are studied. It is concluded that the organization of modern computer security of the State is undoubtedly a complex, systemic and multilevel phenomenon, whose state, dynamics, and perspectives are directly influenced by many external and internal factors, the most important being the political situation. In the world the presence of possible external and internal threats; state and level of development of information and communication of the country and internal political situation, among other aspects.


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