1. Introduction
Human pressure on the environment was defined in 2011 in terms of “global changes”, including climate changes, alterations in energy flows, and land cover and use changes [1,2,3]. The three leading causes of environmental degradation act separately and together, resulting in irreversible changes. Heritage sites worldwide are facing increasing threats from degradation and destruction due to risk factors generated by natural environmental causes (such as climate change, floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, avalanches, or coastal dynamics) and human activities (such as mass tourism, unplanned urbanization, destructive development projects, conflicts, theft, vandalism, and air and visual pollution) [4,5,6,7,8]. Often, heritage sites contain rich biodiversity but also important cultural assets, and their distinct character is the result of these two factors. In order to preserve heritage sites, it is important not only to separately address biodiversity and cultural issues, but also to address their traditional interaction [6,8,9,10]. This justifies the establishment of large-landscape scale priorities involving the integration of biological and social knowledge [11], which are very useful for education and conservation activities [12,13]. This approach to the cultural benefits and values associated with ecosystems is based on the establishment of ecosystem services for managing natural resources. Considered a paradigmatic class of services [14], “cultural ecosystem services” represent a useful concept for researchers and policymakers in understanding the enriching and life-affirming contributions of ecosystems to human well-being. At the same time, this concept represents a significant example of how culture is generally considered an important “variable” in the work of managers, planners, and environmental researchers [14].
The multiple connections between heritage and the environment have been highlighted by many researchers [6,14,15]. On the one hand, some forms of heritage physically exist in an environmental space [15,16,17]; heritage, as a way of life, is shaped and influenced by both natural and cultural ecosystems, thus reflecting personal, social, and group identities [14,15,17,18,19,20]. On the other hand, environmental psychology studies also underline that heritage and environment are fundamental components of place and place identity [15,17,18,19,20,21,22,23]. As a result of the evolution of and changes in its form over time, heritage was further included in the concept of cultural landscape [15,16,22,23,24,25,26,27,28].
Examining cultural and natural variables as co-factors in conservation planning provides ways to apply integrated management [11]. To successfully integrate cultural resources into landscape conservation design, it is necessary to consider them part of the conservation process from early stages [11,29]. Preservation strategies should be conceived in a sustainable way [11,30,31], focusing on future generations and on the sustainable use of natural and cultural resources. Planning could be crucial to all aspects of the process, including strategic, environmental, or spatial planning, and is intrinsically related to administrative, legal, and regulatory aspects, which are crucial in determining whether planning allow for the successful preservation of heritage (Contribution 13) [32].
2. Synopsis of Contributions
This Special Issue, titled “Patrimony Assessment and Sustainable Land Resource Management,” aims to separately or jointly address all elements of the nexus described above in order to investigate the contribution of heritage assessments to sustainable land resource management using theoretical and practical research. Possible topics could include the techniques used to assess heritage (natural, cultural, or both); strategies for its sustainable preservation; the planning of heritage sites; relationships between nature and culture in heritage sites; resource management in heritage sites; regulatory, administrative, and legal issues related to the preservation of natural and cultural heritage; and many other related topics, bridging human and environmental geography. We also welcomed case studies, good practice examples, comparative studies, and theoretical and practical research.
The interest raised by this Issue surpassed expectations. Twenty-seven submissions were received and thirteen were published upon peer review. Published articles address three major topics. The first topic is cultural heritage; we received contributions concerning it relationship with migration and land use transformations (Contribution 1), methods used for visual impact assessments (Contribution 2), the spatial structure of intangible cultural heritage and corridor construction (Contribution 3), and the influence of intangible cultural heritage from the standpoint of the relationship between man and landscape (Contribution 4).
The second category includes articles addressing different research issues concerning specific sites. The relationship between Bears Ears National Monument in the state of Utah in the United States of America and gateway communities is analyzed (Contribution 5); this paper provides significant insights into the community’s connections to the land and relevant changes in their overall experience of community. Parkland landscapes of Northwestern Morocco are analyzed to create a geohistory of missing landscapes (Contribution 6). Northwestern Morocco’s landscapes are significantly affected by anthropogenic factors including agricultural intensification, resource overexploitation, urbanization, and tourism, and local reforestation measures also play a role in shaping these highly anthropized landscapes. This study is methodologically anchored in a geohistorical approach combined with paleoenvironmental, documentary, and historical data. The reconstruction of recent vegetation transformations in the lower Loukkos River valley region, near the hinterland of the city of Larache, and their relationship with the history of settlements, provide useful details for understanding the processes that influence landscape construction. In recent centuries, wooded stands have appeared, in which cork oaks are a structural element. As the forest area decreased, parklands intended for agriculture, agroforestry, and livestock farming began to appear, like the Spanish dehesa and the Portuguese montado. In the 20th century, new forms of anthropization emerged, such as large-scale hydroagricultural equipment, which permanently reduced cork oak groves to mere remnants of public land, and reforestation with pine and eucalyptus was carried out.
Shibing Karst World Natural Heritage, a heritage site in the South China Karst, was the subject of a 20-year ecological impact analysis using remote sensing data and geospatial analysis (Contribution 7). The authors quantitatively analyzed the characteristics of land use changes in the Shibing Karst World Natural Heritage site, and introduced the regional eco-environment quality assessment index for quantitative factor analysis.
Henan Province of China provides a case study for researching the spatial patterns and influencing factors of communal sites (Contribution 8). This paper focuses on a specific type of vernacular architecture, unique at the regional level, and provides a reference for heritage conservation surveys using mechanisms that influence the spatial distribution of the community.
The third and last comprehensive category reunites generic heritage and landscape issues, including an analysis of the characteristics and drivers of traditional Chinese village distribution and an interpretation of the connotation of village vulnerability and generation patterns (Contribution 9), a systematic Landscape Character Assessment of historic coal mining sites aimed at landscape conservation (Contribution 10), and a plea regarding the increasing vulnerability of village heritage using a Chinese example (Contribution 11).
Su H. et al. dedicate their study (Contribution 9) to analyzing the distribution of China’s traditional villages, using series spatial analysis approaches, including the imbalance index, average nearest neighbor index, kernel density analysis, and spatial autocorrelation. The authors also provide some suggestions related to the future protection and development of traditional villages using Geodetector, and mathematical statistics were used to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze related factors that affected traditional village distribution.
Liu Q. et al. (Contribution 10) explore how the Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) methodology can be operationalized in the conservation of ecological landscapes in historic coal mines. The importance of this study is related to the fact that mining heritage was recognized as a significant part of industrial heritage, as historic coal mining environments represent one of the earliest areas of industrialization and embrace multiple values, such as historical, cultural, social, and symbolic values. Historic coal mining environments have also provided strong evidence of the interaction between modern society and the natural environment. However, it is shown that historic coal mining environments face significant challenges in terms of conservation and management (such as severe environmental degradation, including ecological damage and landscape fragmentation; additionally, the patrimonial values of many historic coal mining environments may be forgotten or underestimated over time).
An in-depth analysis of rural heritage is carried out by Shi B. et al. (Contribution 11), who examine the spatial differentiation and evolutionary characteristics of vulnerability in 123 traditional villages within Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province, southwestern China. Furthermore, the authors explore the main factors influencing changes in vulnerability at different spatial scales using a set of vulnerability evaluation index systems integrating the characteristics of village heritage.
In addition to these major themes, this Special Issue includes an article focusing on tourism, presenting a sustainability assessment of geotourism from the perspective of the energy–water–waste–economic nexus based on a Chinese example (Contribution 12), and an article focusing on local planning, including the ability to address heritage and landscape issues (Contribution 13).
3. Conclusions
This Special Issue highlights the impact of global changes on natural and cultural heritage, and the complex connections established between heritage and the environment. These relations are explored in the contributions included in this Special Issue, with each article showing how environmental geography, environmental psychology, cultural, geotourism, or planning studies can deepen the understanding of different types of knowledge (environmental and heritage assessment). Although, in recent years, numerous studies were devoted to the connections between natural and cultural heritage and the environment, heritage is not fully included in existing ecosystem-based frameworks. Multiple heritage values are increasingly being analyzed, highlighting the economic value of heritage and its different valorization possibilities, but they are not yet linked to the key value categories in environmental values research.
The importance of this theme is particularly evident in discussions about heritage assessments focused on climate change and land use dynamics. The contributions in this Special Issue explore different topics, ranging from the dynamic of use of parklands landscapes, the vulnerability of rural heritage, the characteristics and drivers of traditional Chinese village distribution, the vulnerability of rural heritage, and the usefulness of Landscape Character Assessments for the conservation of historic coal mining sites. Heritage assessments are difficult and complex and require a comprehensive approach including a system of indicators that can reflect the connection between human and physical ecosystems. At the same time, the assessment system is designed to find a balance between development and conservation. This Special Issue highlights the importance of combining multiple methodologies, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative approaches along with advanced spatial analysis techniques, including GIS, mathematical statistics, a Landscape Character Assessment methodology, and a visual impact assessment of cultural heritage.
This Special Issue addresses the importance of planning in establishing the governance of heritage to ensure its conservation and optimal use. From this perspective, heritage also has an instrumental value, recognized by specialists and political decision-makers in the use of the instruments and rules through which the valorization of heritage is reconfigured for social, cultural, political, and economic purposes to meet the needs of communities, increase quality of life, and achieve the development objectives set out in strategies or local plans. Thus, planning is essential to the conservation and adaptive reuse of heritage.
Based on the diversity of the topics addressed and the high quality of the published articles, we believe that this Special Issue fulfilled its mission and adds to the general body of knowledge in land sciences in general, and patrimony assessments and sustainable land resource management in particular.
Author Contributions
Writing—original draft preparation, F.-C.M. and A.-I.P.; writing—review and editing, F.-C.M., A.-I.P. and M.J.N. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement
Data sharing is not applicable to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the team at Land for helping and coordinating this Special Issue. Sincere gratitude goes to the anonymous peer reviewers for their valuable assessment and insightful feedback that helped to improve the scientific quality of the papers. The guest editors would like to acknowledge all the authors who contributed to this Special Issue.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
List of Contributions
- Lugo-Espinosa, G.; Acevedo-Ortiz, M.A.; Aquino-Bolaños, T.; Ortiz-Hernández, Y.D.; Ortiz-Hernández, F.E.; Pérez-Pacheco, R.; López-Cruz, J.Y. Cultural Heritage, Migration, and Land Use Transformation in San José Chiltepec, Oaxaca. Land 2024, 13, 1658. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13101658.
- Kou, H.; Zhang, L.; Zhang, S. Visual Impact Assessment Method for Cultural Heritage: West Lake Cultural Landscape in Hangzhou, China. Land 2024, 13, 1596. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13101596.
- Lin, F.; Zhang, X.; Ma, Z.; Zhang, Y. Spatial Structure and Corridor Construction of Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Case Study of the Ming Great Wall. Land 2022, 11, 1478. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11091478.
- Meng, L.; Zhu, C.; Pu, J.; Wen, B.; Si, W. Study on the Influence Mechanism of Intangible Cultural Heritage Distribution from Man–Land Relationship Perspective: A Case Study in Shandong Province. Land 2022, 11, 1225. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11081225.
- Cope, M.R.; Mueller, J.; Ward, C.; Sanders, S.R.; Long-Meek, E. Sense of Community and the Bears Ears National Monument. Land 2024, 13, 1976. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13121976.
- Ballouche, A. Missing Landscapes: A Geohistory of Parkland Landscapes in Northwestern Morocco. Land 2024, 13, 649. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13050649.
- Zhang, N.; Chi, Y. 20-Year Ecological Impact Analysis of Shibing Karst World Natural Heritage through Land Use. Land 2023, 12, 1978. https://doi.org/10.3390/land12111978.
- Zhu, Y.; Tian, Y.; Tang, G.; Zheng, D.; Yu, F. Spatial Patterns and Influencing Factors of People’s Commune Sites: A Case Study of Henan Province, China. Land 2024, 13, 1860. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13111860.
- Su, H.; Wang, Y.; Zhang, Z.; Dong, W. Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Traditional Village Distribution in China. Land 2022, 11, 1631. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11101631.
- Liu, Q.; Zainal Abidin, N.A.; Maliki, N.Z.; Zhang, K.; Li, Z.; Liu, S. Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) in Historic Coal Mining Settings for Landscape Conservation: A Systematic Review. Land 2024, 13, 1396. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091396.
- Shi, B.; Liu, H.; Huang, L.; Zhang, Y.; Xiang, Z. Increasing Vulnerability of Village Heritage: Evidence from 123 Villages in Aba Prefecture, Sichuan, China. Land 2023, 12, 2048. https://doi.org/10.3390/land12112048.
- Xia, B. Sustainability Assessment of Geotourism Consumption Based on Energy–Water–Waste–Economic Nexus: Evidence from Zhangye Danxia National Geopark. Land 2024, 13, 1857. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13111857.
- Nowak, M.; Pantyley, V.; Blaszke, M.; Fakeyeva, L.; Lozynskyy, R.; Petrisor, A.-I. Spatial Planning at the National Level: Comparison of Legal and Strategic Instruments in a Case Study of Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland. Land 2023, 12, 1364. https://doi.org/10.3390/land12071364.
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