How do people value agricultural landscape? To get to this answer, I believe it’s sensory and ethnographic. I am utilising citizen science principles and participatory action based depth to get to this answer. I can’t do it alone, it requires experts from different disciplines and sectors. This year collaboration has created a transdisciplinary sub-project with cartographer Shaun Lewin. We have called it Mapping Landscape Values. Part funded by Agritech and guided by several mentors, the project took eight weeks to complete.
Mapping Landscape Values
The project has created a permanent record of perceptual data. This data was gathered from participants we worked with in the past but some of it was difficult to make a record of. Due to Covid-19, data we have gathered has become important because it deals with people wanting to use green spaces. Since the pandemic, the amount of people using green spaces has increased. However, the knowledge people have of such areas is limited which can cause problems for landowners and caretakers of land. Understanding how people value these spaces can help landowners manage these problems. Government landscape monitoring targets and ELMS has increased the need for perceptual workshops and so I have been re-looking at our data and methods.
The Output – How do people value agricultural landscape – Let’s start to SEE what they FELT!
We now can compare novel measurable perceptual data to previously collected textual and spoken perceptual data I co-gathered. In the long run, such data sources can contribute to the forming of a perceptual indicator to help monitor landscape. Importantly, such data can steer value based input into ELMS applications. In the short term, Ecogeographer can work to test the prototype in connection to ELMS trials and connected landscape projects and activities such as “RURITAGE” and “landscape of landscape monitoring” with Dr. John Martin. A webzine and research paper will fully document results. Plus we will blog again soon.
Mapping Landscape Values received a Grant from the Agritech Cornwall Innovation Scheme, part of the ERDF’s European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 which part funded costs towards specialist research to convert, store and analyse novel perceptual data collected from the general public. This data is now part of a new prototype service that enables ecogeographer to expand its practice. It also provides an innovative look at how the agriculture technology sector in Cornwall addresses collecting data about how people perceive agricultural landscape. This contributes to ELMS and access to public goods and services.
