Exploring sense of place across cultivated lands through public participatory mapping

• Published in: Landscape ecology 2019-07, Vol.34 (7), p.1675-1692
• Main Authors: Pérez-Ramírez, I., García-Llorente, M., Benito, A., Castro, A. J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agricultural land; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cultivated lands; Ecology; Ecosystem services; Environmental Management; Land use; Landscape; Landscape Ecology; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Life Sciences; Mapping; Nature Conservation; Orchards; Protected areas; Provisioning; Research Article; Rural areas; Rural land use; Sustainable Development; Urban areas; Workshops
• ISSN: 0921-2973; 1572-9761
• DOI: 10.1007/s10980-019-00816-9

Context Cultivated lands have undergone a shift towards intensification and increased productivity, favoring provisioning services at the expense of regulating and cultural services. Cultivated lands have rarely been researched as a provider of cultural services. Objectives The overarching goal of this study is to assess sense of place across cultivated lands. To do so, we used participatory mapping to elicit public knowledge of the past and present coverage of agricultural areas, as well as to reveal the public sense of place attached to cultivated lands and perceptions about future land-use pathways. Methods This study was conducted in an agrarian and rural region of SE Madrid (Spain), where we did ecosystem service participatory mapping workshops with key stakeholders related to the agrarian sector: farming professionals, land-use decision-makers and planners and other local actors. Results We identified linkages between cultivated lands and sense of place as a key cultural service. The locations most pinpointed for its sense of place overlapped with cultivated lands. The future land-use pathways that showed the highest agreement between the likelihood and interest in their promotion were the increases in green and/or protected areas and orchards. Extensive crops and urban areas the land-use pathways with the highest dissonance. Conclusions The results encourage land planners and researchers to approach landscape values in relation to the sense of place. We concluded that cultivated lands present a sense of place, and this link has the possible to root society in agricultural landscape through the establishment of belongingness, stewardship and care connections.