Landscape character assessment (LCA) methods have been used in the past few decades to analyze, classify, and map landscape types, using objective and subjective approaches, with the aid of both quantitative and qualitative data. This paper addresses and critically evaluates the compromises and ways in which contemporary LCA methodologies employ (or profess they employ) objective versus subjective and quantitative versus qualitative data and analytical tools, in their conceptualization and implementation. It begins with an extensive literature review of the ways in which the objective/subjective and the quantitative/qualitative variables interweave in currently practiced or proposed versions of LCA. With the aid of meta-analysis, the paper traces and discusses the recent evolution, methods, concessions, and risks of such endeavors, and develops an integrative conceptual model for critical assessment, analysis, and negotiation of the interplay between objective-subjective and quantitative-qualitative constituent parts of existing LCA methodologies. It concludes by pointing to pitfalls and prospects, in the broader attempt towards a more concerted, integrative approach to LCA development and practice, both appropriate to its challenges and adaptable to time-space-culture-discipline landscape particularities and means of implementation.
United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the European Green Deal and the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are legislative proposals counting on rural and agricultural landscapes to assist climate change mitigation, ecosystem services and preservation of heritage. Agricultural landscapes take up more than 10% of the earth’s land surface (1.5 billion ha), presenting a continuous field of interaction between man and nature, shaping the earth’s epidermis since antiquity. The Mediterranean basin is one of the most evident places on earth exhibiting this relationship, between the anthropogenic and the natural, hosting lands of enormous ecological, economic and cultural value. With Greece’s economy being based largely on agriculture in the past, traditional Greek agricultural landscapes present great socio-cultural importance; those landscapes, managed appropriately, could dynamically help combat climate issues, continue to provide services of high value and also present local character, tradition and culture. Yet, the acknowledgement of agricultural heritage, the creation of mixed productive socio-ecological profiles and the realization of governance schemes towards agricultural connections, such as linking traditional agricultural practices to the wider anthropogenic, ecological and recreational services, are in their infancy for many countries worldwide, including Greece. Landscape heritage is considered as important as archaeological and architectural heritage. In this paper, three examples of high importance Agricultural Heritage Landscapes (AHLs) are presented: the masticulture in Chios island; the black (Corinthian) raisin vineyards in Aigialeia (Egialia), Peloponnese; and the olive groves of Thassos island. Their importance is analyzed and strategic steps towards their acknowledgement, conservation and appropriate management are presented.
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