Local and Global Threats to Rural and Peri-Urban Cultural and Natural Landscapes

Dear Colleagues,

Cultural and natural landscapes are integrated, mosaic systems of societal and environmental components shaped over centuries. Their potential can be evaluated in terms of aesthetic, natural, and cultural qualities, which should be considered from manifold, multidimensional vantage points. The growing global pressure on combined agriculture–forest and peri-urban landscapes drives their irreversible transformations within the unique and change-vulnerable traditional local landscape, its biodiversity, and ecological and cultural value. It has an impact on the identity of the area, as well.

It takes various aspects of landscape perception contributed by diverse scientific domains, such as urban planning, landscape architecture, environmental protection, environmental engineering, civil engineering, human geography and spatial governance, forest and agricultural sciences, and management and quality sciences, to appreciate the ongoing changes and the broad array of varied threats and to ensure sustainable development of areas where such valuable landscapes are. Only an interdisciplinary commitment to protecting the values of natural and cultural landscapes can help comprehend the changes in the socioeconomic context and develop new patterns and approaches to controlling and monitoring them, followed by shaping future inevitable landscape transformations.

In an attempt to build solid international knowledge and reach feasible solutions to the problems mentioned above, we invite authors to contribute original, interdisciplinary proposals identifying threats to natural and cultural landscapes of both global and local relevance. We will welcome tested recommendations and good practices connected to the deployment of plans and projects concerning governance, spatial policy, and other types of effort to guide landscape changes in line with sustainable development principles.

These complex challenges require interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. Therefore, we encourage the submission of research, empirical, or conceptual studies and reviews from all scientific fields, research perspectives, and approaches.

We look forward to your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Józef Hernik
Dr. Barbara Prus
Dr. Karol Król
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• agriculture–forest landscape
• cultural landscape
• culturally and environmentally vulnerable landscapes
• global and local threats
• interdisciplinarity of research
• development of new patterns for landscape governance
• new approach to landscape protection