Landscape Evaluation as a Complementary Tool in Environmental Assessment. Study Case in Urban Areas: Salamanca (Spain)

Abstract

In recent years, the landscape has become another environmental resource, so it is important to incorporate it into planning actions. However, its broad sense of study has made it difficult to develop methodologies that precisely diagnose the state of the landscape and its management requirements, especially in dynamic spaces like urban areas. In order to develop a method capable of providing information that can be incorporated into environmental assessment and territorial planning tasks so that the needs of the landscape are taken into account in the decision-making stages, an objective methodology is presented based on the study of different parameters (biotic, abiotic and socioeconomic) analyzed in the field and subsequently geoprocessed through Geographic Information Systems according to their influence on the landscape. Through the proposed methodology it is possible to determine the quality, fragility and need of protection of the landscape, as well as to identify the diverse landscape units that form the landscape of a territory. Based on these results, a landscape diagnosis can be drawn up to quantify its overall and partial state, carry out monitoring analyses and make comparisons between different landscape units, so that management measures can be adopted according to the obtained scenarios.

Modeling the Visual Landscape: A Review on Approaches, Methods and Techniques

“…by a large number of participants using a questionnaire-based survey. In the recent paper of Criado et al [222] (p. 6395), landscape evaluation is treated as a complementary tool in the assessment of the environment; after identifying the characteristic/distinctive landscape units in urban areas of Spain, the landscape is 'diagnosed' based on an objective and quantitative GIS-based evaluation of the landscape situation in each of the identified landscape units, "according the extension (ha) and percentage (%) of each degree (very high, high, moderate, low and very low) of quality, fragility or need for protection in each unit".…”

Improving the Management of a Semi-Arid Agricultural Ecosystem through Digital Mapping of Soil Properties: The Case of Salamanca (Spain)

“…The vegetation present in the studied area is scarce due to the high anthropization of the area, derived mainly from the intense agricultural activity that has led to the deforestation of the climactic Mediterranean forest for centuries. Currently, together with the predominant crops, small redoubts of holm oak groves and holm oak pastures, as well as areas with natural grasslands and riparian vegetation [28,29] constitute the general cover of the environment.…”