Studying long-term changes in cultural landscapes: outlines of a research framework and protocol

Applied historical landscape research often takes place under the umbrella of sustainability issues and sustainability research, but now includes both environmental sustainability and community resilience. This confronts the study of cultural landscapes with new issues and challenges such as how to utilize long-term and more recent perspectives, and to integrate economic, cultural and ecological drivers of landscape change. A key question is how to make landscape studies relevant for both contemporary landscape services and future landscape changes. We propose a new framework for study that combines insights from landscape biography, historical ecology and systems theory. It presents a ‘protocol’ for exploratory research with premises and operational principles, and argues for geodesign in connecting environmental issues, heritage practices and question-driven historical analysis. The framework and protocol are based on recent research within the European Community’s Seventh Framework project Sustainable Futures for Europe’s Heritage in Cultural Landscapes (HERCULES).