Multifunctional land use: Meeting future demand for landscape goods and services

Abstract

Cultural landscapes are multifunctional through their simultaneous support of habitat, productivity, regulatory, social, and economic functions (de Groot 1987; Bastian and Schreiber 1999). Heterogeneity is a basic characteristic of landscape, and this heterogeneity implies the capacity of landscape to support various, sometimes contradictory functions simultaneously. Many elements in cultural landscapes have a multifunctional character, and this has been thoroughly studied. For instance, hedgerows (Burel 1996), forests (Pandey 2002), wetlands and their ecotones (Kruk 2003), riparian buffer zones (Mander et al. 2005) and various grassland ecosystems (Gibon 2005), which control various energy and material fluxes in the landscape, protect biodiversity and provide recreational opportunities for people, are classical examples of multifunctional landscape elements. Land use is the key activity which determines the performance of landscapes with respect to socio-economic functions such as land based production, infrastructure and housing. The degree of integration between these socio-economic functions and environmental functions including natural resources protection depends on the patterns and intensities of land use (Wiggering et al. 2003). © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.