Natural landscape
A natural landscape is the original landscape that exists before it is acted upon by human culture.[note 1] The natural landscape and the cultural landscape are separate parts of the landscape.[note 2] However, in the 21st century, landscapes that are totally untouched by human activity no longer exist,[3] so that reference is sometimes now made to degrees of naturalness within a landscape.[note 3]
In Silent Spring (1962) Rachel Carson describes a roadside verge as it used to look: "Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year" and then how it looks now following the use of herbicides: "The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire".[4] Even though the landscape before it is sprayed is biologically degraded, and may well contains alien species, the concept of what might constitute a natural landscape can still be deduced from the context.
The phrase "natural landscape" was first used in connection with
Origins of the term
The concept of a natural landscape was first developed in connection with
In his extensive travels in South America, Alexander von Humboldt became the first to conceptualize a natural landscape separate from the cultural landscape, though he does not actually use these terms.[9][10][note 4] Andrew Jackson Downing was aware of, and sympathetic to, Humboldt's ideas, which therefore influenced American landscape gardening.[12]
Subsequently, the geographer Otto Schlüter, in 1908, argued that by defining geography as a Landschaftskunde (landscape science) would give geography a logical subject matter shared by no other discipline.[13][14] He defined two forms of landscape: the Urlandschaft (original landscape) or landscape that existed before major human induced changes and the Kulturlandschaft (cultural landscape) a landscape created by human culture. Schlüter argued that the major task of geography was to trace the changes in these two landscapes.
The term natural landscape is sometimes used as a synonym for
The natural and conservation
Matters are complicated by the fact that the words nature and natural have more than one meaning. On the one hand there is the main dictionary meaning for nature: "The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations."[16] On the other hand, there is the growing awareness, especially since Charles Darwin, of humanities biological affinity with nature.[17]
The
America
What is meant by natural, within the American conservation movement, has been changing over the last century and a half.
In the mid-nineteenth century American began to realize that the land was becoming more and more domesticated and wildlife was disappearing. This led to the creation of
A century later, in the mid-twentieth century, it began to be believed that the earlier policy of "protection from disturbance was inadequate to preserve park values", and that is that direct human intervention was necessary to restore the landscape of National Parks to its ‘'natural'’ condition.[23] In 1963 the Leopold Report argued that "A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America".[26] This policy change eventually led to the restoration of wolves in Yellowstone Park in the 1990s.
However, recent research in various disciplines indicates that a pristine natural or "primitive" landscape is a myth, and it now realised that people have been changing the natural into a cultural landscape for a long while, and that there are few places untouched in some way from human influence.
Also important is a reaction recently amongst scholars against dualistic thinking about nature and culture. Maria Kaika comments: "Nowadays, we are beginning to see nature and culture as intertwined once again – not
Europe
The landscape of Europe has considerably altered by people and even in an area, like the
The Swiss National Park, however, represent a more natural landscape. It was founded in 1914, and is one of the earliest national parks in Europe. Visitors are not allowed to leave the motor road, or paths through the park, make fire or camp. The only building within the park is Chamanna Cluozza,
History of natural landscape
No place on the Earth is unaffected by people and their culture. People are part of biodiversity, but human activity affects biodiversity, and this alters the natural landscape.[38] Mankind have altered landscape to such an extent that few places on earth remain pristine, but once free of human influences, the landscape can return to a natural or near natural state.[39]
Even the remote
Procession
Through different intervals of time, the process of natural landscapes have been shaped by a series of landforms, mostly due to its factors, including tectonics, erosion, weathering and vegetation.
Examples of cultural forces
Cultural forces intentionally or unintentionally, have an influence upon the landscape.
See also
- Cityscape
- Intact forest landscape
- Land restoration
- Land use
- Landscape art
- National Parks
- Natural environment
- Natural heritage
- Rewilding (conservation biology)
- Romantic movement
- Seascapes
- Skyscape art
- Soundscape
Notes
- ^ "The area prior to the introduction of man 's activity is represented by one body of morphologic facts. The forms that man has introduced are another set. We may call the former, with reference to man, the original, natural landscape. In its entirety it no longer exists in many parts of the world, but its reconstruction and understanding are the first part of formal morphonology."[1]
- ^ "The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result."[2]
- ^ The European Environment Agency's planned forest naturalness index is an example of an attempt to define one type of natural landscape in Europe. The Agency lists forests in three categories: (1) Plantations; (2) Semi-natural; and (3) Naturally dynamic. The latter are "forests whose structure, composition and function have been shaped by natural dynamics without substantial anthropogenic influence over a long period of time".
- ^ "The description of nature in its manifold richness of form, as a distinct branch of poetic literature, was wholly unknown to the Greeks. The landscape appears among them merely as the basil-ground of the picture of which human figures constitute the main subject. Passions, breaking forth into action, riveted their attention almost exclusively."[11]
- ^ "It is true that certain human technological actions do have unintended consequences that spread everywhere; there are contagious effects that seep into the nooks and crannies of all nature."[40]
References
- ^ Carl O. Sauer, "The Morphology of Landscape". University of California Publications in Geography, vol. 2, No. 2, 12 October 1925, p. 37. https://archive.org/stream/universityofc02univ/universityofc02univ_djvu.txt
- ^ Carl O. Sauer, "The Morphology of Landscape", p. 46.
- ^ Nuwer, Rachel. "There's no such thing as truly 'pristine' nature anymore". bbc.com. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
- ^ Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1962, p. 1.
- ^ Carl O. Sauer, "The Morphology of Landscape". University of California Publications in Geography 2 (2), pp. 19-53.
- ^ Chunglin Kwa, "Alexander von Humboldt's invention of the natural landscape", The European Legacy, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 149-162, 2005
- ^ J. Aikin, M.D., Letters from a Father to His Son, on Various Topics, Relative to Literature and the Conduct of Life. Written in the Years 1792 and 1793, (Philadelphia: Samuel Harrison Smith), p. 148.
- ^ A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening Adapted to North America.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 25 December 2008. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Chunglin Kwa, Alexander von Humboldt's invention of the natural landscape, The European Legacy, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 149-162, 2005
- Cosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the universe (translation 1804), Volume 2, Part I, Paragraph 5, Chapter I. http://www.avhumboldt.net/humboldt/publications/paragraph/did/35/vid/38/cid/244/tid/7698/text/The-description-of-nature-in-its-manifold-richness-of-form-as-a-distinct-branch-of-poetic-literat
- ^ See Horticulturist, vol.4, no.2, August 1849, which Downing edited.
- ^ James, P.E & Martin, G (1981) All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas. John Wiley & Sons. New York, p.177.
- ^ Elkins, T.H (1989) Human and Regional Geography in the German-speaking lands in the first forty years of the Twentieth Century. Entriken, J. Nicholas & Brunn, Stanley D (Eds) Reflections on Richard Hartshorne's The nature of geography. Occasional publications of the Association of the American Geographers, Washington DC., p. 27.
- ^ "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature". William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), pp. 69–90.
- ^ "Nature", New Oxford American Dictionary
- ^ "Animals That Share Human DNA Sequences", Seattlepi.com
- ^ Gregory H. Aplett and David N. Cole, "The Trouble with Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Goals" in Beyond Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Stewardshio in an Era of Rapid Change (Washington, DC.: Island Press, 2010), p. 14. They cite William Conron's 1995 essay "The Trouble with Wilderness: or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature".
- ^ Joanne Vining, Melinda Merrick and Emily Price, "The Distinction between Humans and Nature". Human Ecology Review, vol.15, no. 1, 2008, p. 1
- ^ Vining, Merrick and Price, p. 1.
- ^ Maria Kaika, City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City. (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 4.
- ^ Gregory H. Aplett and David N. Cole, "The Trouble with Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Goals" in Beyond Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Stewardshio in an Era of Rapid Change (Washington, DC.: Island Press, 2010), pp. 14-15.
- ^ a b Aplett and Cole, p. 15.
- ^ William Cronon, pp. 72-77
- ISBN 978-0-231-11232-1.
- ^ Aplett and Cole, p. 16.
- ^ Aplett and Cole, p. 18
- ^ Aplett and Cole, p. 24
- ^ City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City. (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 4.
- ^ Cronon, p. 78.
- ^ a b Cronon, p. 85.
- Scottish Natural Heritage. Archived from the originalon 29 October 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
- ^ Murray (1973)
- ^ "Extinct Island Pig Spotted Again". BBC News. 17 November 2006. Retrieved 1 January 2007.
- ^ Fraser Darling and Boyd (1969) p. 64
- ^ Steven, H. M. & Carlisle, A. (1959). The Native Pinewoods of Scotland. Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh
- ^ Parc Suisse Biosphere Reserve
- ^ National Survey Reveals Biodiversity Crisis Archived 7 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine American Museum of Natural History
- ^ YouTube, Professor James Lovelock, We can't save the planet, BBC NEWS, 2010/03/30
- ^ Rolston, Holmes III (Spring 1998). "Technology versus nature: what is natural?" (PDF). Journal of Philosophy and Technology. 2 (2). University of Aberdeen Center for Philosophy, Technology & Society: 3–14. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2013.