Landscape geography

The landscape geography or landscape customer is a branch of geography , especially the regional geography . It deals with the typification of individual landscapes , their comparison in different regions of the world and the geofactorial requirements (location, material, form, structure and function) of their development.

definition

The term is not always used consistently because the geographical concept of landscape is not clearly defined. Alexander von Humboldt is assigned the term “total character of a region of the earth”, which means parts of the earth's surface on a medium scale, which are characterized by similar structures of the geographic substance (physical and anthropogenic geofactors ). Landscapes can therefore be defined as types of space - as distinct from individual spaces (locations). Examples would be mountains, coasts, rainforests or even megacities. Spatial individuals, on the other hand, are the subject of geography .

development

The establishment of landscape geography as a separate sub-area - at that time mostly called landscape science - goes back to Siegfried Passarge , who raised the landscape to the central concept of geography . In the last few decades, landscape geography has developed in the direction of a holistic, environmentally conscious term, for example through the work of Dieter Steiner and Josef Schmithüsen , who expanded it into human ecology .

More landscape terms

That conclusion is the general use of language and that of the photographer against which to Meyers Lexicon (1908) those section of the earth's surface means, we are able to survey from a certain location, seem to crash to the horizon or horizon of earth and sky , while the landscape painting the Aspects of beauty, peculiarity and wholeness emphasized, which conceptually corresponds more to the English landscape .

Cultural landscapes

Geographers treat landscape on the one hand under the static aspects of natural topography (terrain forms, bodies of water, indigenous vegetation, etc.), on the other hand as the material basis of human existence, whereby a dynamic flows through notions of order and the results of human activity - above all through agriculture and settlements as well as the infrastructure of traffic . Viewed in a dynamic sense - see cultural landscape - the subject also deals with rival claims of land use , a central topic also of spatial planning . There are strong links here with nature conservation and land management , with so-called landscape architecture as well as with ecology and spatial aspects of sociology .

Data bases

While the cadastral map and topographical and thematic maps were used as a database in the past, digital methods have predominated for about two decades. From the 1980s onwards, the computerized cadastre was combined with digital terrain models , which were soon developed across the board and in various scales. Hybrid landscape models and the first land information systems (LIS) emerged around 1990 , which grew into multidisciplinary geographic information systems (GIS) in the years that followed . Today, these systems allow the linking of different data sets and partly also with other databases, for example with environmental information systems .

Research fields

Landscape research is currently carried out primarily in interdisciplinary research fields. As an example which are mountain research that coastal research or polar research to name.

Landscape geographers (selection)

literature

J. Schmithüsen: General geosynergetics - basics of landscape science . Textbook of the general Geogr. Volume 12, 349 pp., DeGruyter, Berlin 1976 (see also a review by G. Pfeifer ) ^.
Meyers Large Conversation Lexicon: Landscape .
G. Fochler-Hauke et al .: General geography (especially keywords landscape and landscape science). Fischer-Lexikon Volume 14, 390 pp., Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt 1959.
R. Falter and J. Hasse (2001): Landscape Geography and Natural Hermeneutics. In: Geography 55 (2), p.121–137, doi : 10.3112 / geography.2001.02.02
P. Hoyningen, O.Wernli et al: Discussion on Hans Carol's landscape geography (PDF; 7.1 MB). In: Peter Meusburger (Ed.): Innsbrucker geogr. Studies , Volume 7, Innsbruck 1980.