Landscape Governance in the Age of Social Media

Dear Colleagues,

At the end of the 20th century, documents like the World Heritage Guidelines or the European Landscape Convention proposed new and challenging ways of conceptualizing landscape assessment and governance. Consequently, in the last two decades, numerous countries have reevaluated their national planning systems and landscape conservation policies.

During the same time, social media has grown into an extensive source of data with a certain influence on how we regard spaces. Currently, numerous researchers are advocating the value of social media data to better comprehend ecosystem services provision, their use, and its intensity. Through this, we may also better comprehend how to recognize people's patterns of behavior, or how they perceive the landscape.

The relation between social media and current conceptualizations of landscape allows for pertinent questions: Is social media useful for administrations to recognize and adapt to changes in land use, patterns of mobility, or landscape meaning? Is it bringing a more democratic understanding of the landscape and its conservation? Does it serve local communities to express their feelings towards governance policies? Do any of these factors align with the concepts laid out by international organizations like the IUCN, UNESCO, or the European Council?

We invite you to delve into the relationship between contemporary forms of landscape valuation and governance and current social media. Possible lines of research include current connections of social media with:

• Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and governance decentralization;
• Participatory scenario and land planning based on online technologies;
• Multi-scale processes andsocial–ecological resilience;
• Spatio–temporal patterns for the maintenance of the living landscape;
• Sustainable governance and rural landscape stewardship;
• User generated content (UGC) as a tool for landscape studies;
• Inclusive and participatory land governance—a cross-country comparison.

Kind regards,

Dr. Cecilia Arnaiz Schmitz
Dr. Nicolas Marine
Prof. Dr. María F. Schmitz
Guest Editors

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