“…Our analysis is based on the well-established theory that what constitutes wilderness is not the specific biophysical properties of an area but rather the specific meanings ascribed to it according to cultural patterns of interpretation (cf. Nash, 1967Nash, /2001Oelschlaeger, 1991;Cronon, 1995;Schama, 1995;Kirchhoff and Trepl, 2009;Vicenzotti and Trepl, 2009;Vicenzotti, 2011a;Haß et al, 2012). What these interpretations -which include projections of people's inner wilderness onto outer nature -essentially have in common is that an area is regarded as 'an antiuniverse' (Dudley and Novak, 1972: 309) or, to be more precise, as a moral counter-world to culture (Kirchhoff and Trepl, 2009;Haß et al, 2012).…”
This paper develops a historical and systematic typology of perceptions of wilderness that exist in contemporary western European cultures. After describing notions of wilderness associated with worldviews that emerged during the Enlightenment period (theological, early Enlightenment, liberalism, democratism) and as a critical response to it (Rousseauism, early Romanticism, English and German conservatism), we outline four recent transformations of these traditional notions of wilderness: wilderness as an ecological object, as a place of nature's self-reassertion, as a place of thrill and as a sphere of amorality and meaninglessness. In our conclusion, we suggest what practical relevance arises from such a nuanced understanding of the inherently ambiguous concept of wilderness.
“…Our analysis is based on the well-established theory that what constitutes wilderness is not the specific biophysical properties of an area but rather the specific meanings ascribed to it according to cultural patterns of interpretation (cf. Nash, 1967Nash, /2001Oelschlaeger, 1991;Cronon, 1995;Schama, 1995;Kirchhoff and Trepl, 2009;Vicenzotti and Trepl, 2009;Vicenzotti, 2011a;Haß et al, 2012). What these interpretations -which include projections of people's inner wilderness onto outer nature -essentially have in common is that an area is regarded as 'an antiuniverse' (Dudley and Novak, 1972: 309) or, to be more precise, as a moral counter-world to culture (Kirchhoff and Trepl, 2009;Haß et al, 2012).…”
This paper develops a historical and systematic typology of perceptions of wilderness that exist in contemporary western European cultures. After describing notions of wilderness associated with worldviews that emerged during the Enlightenment period (theological, early Enlightenment, liberalism, democratism) and as a critical response to it (Rousseauism, early Romanticism, English and German conservatism), we outline four recent transformations of these traditional notions of wilderness: wilderness as an ecological object, as a place of nature's self-reassertion, as a place of thrill and as a sphere of amorality and meaninglessness. In our conclusion, we suggest what practical relevance arises from such a nuanced understanding of the inherently ambiguous concept of wilderness.
“…Thus, landscape can be understood as a territorial entity a 'manageable space' , which can be seen as positivistic (landscape as an ecosystem complex; e.g. Neef 1967), and constructivistic (as an aesthetic phenomenon or even mental construct; Leibenath and Gailing 2012) or as a space of action (Blotevogel 1995, Kirchhoff et al 2012.…”
“…However, this method will be ineffective in the following three cases: (1) when the segmented blocks contain different kinds of functional zones [25], so a block does not fall entirely within an individual functional zone; (2) when there are temporal differences between VHR images and the used road data [26]; and (3) when researchers are seeking functional zones at a scale other than that of the blocks. Functional zones usually have different sizes and heterogeneities, which should be derived from segmentation results at multiple scales [27]. Accordingly, there is ample room for improvement on existing methods for generating functional zones from VHR satellite images [28].…”
Urban functional zones, such as commercial, residential, and industrial zones, are basic units of urban planning, and play an important role in monitoring urbanization. However, historical functional-zone maps are rarely available for cities in developing countries, as traditional urban investigations focus on geographic objects rather than functional zones. Recent studies have sought to extract functional zones automatically from very-high-resolution (VHR) satellite images, and they mainly concentrate on classification techniques, but ignore zone segmentation which delineates functional-zone boundaries and is fundamental to functional-zone analysis. To resolve the issue, this study presents a novel segmentation method, geoscene segmentation, which can identify functional zones at multiple scales by aggregating diverse urban objects considering their features and spatial patterns. In experiments, we applied this method to three Chinese cities-Beijing, Putian, and Zhuhai-and generated detailed functional-zone maps with diverse functional categories. These experimental results indicate our method effectively delineates urban functional zones with VHR imagery; different categories of functional zones extracted by using different scale parameters; and spatial patterns that are more important than the features of individual objects in extracting functional zones. Accordingly, the presented multiscale geoscene segmentation method is important for urban-functional-zone analysis, and can provide valuable data for city planners.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.