Kolloquium Geoinformatik Delineating and describing landscapes and landform elements: challenges and novel methodological approaches

Representation of landscape in information systems, enabling their analysis and integration in decision making processes, is a basic requirement if political and legal tools such as the European Landscape Convention are to be effective. However, landscape is not directly measureable, and has multiple properties which make its representation challenging. In my talk I will describe some of the limitations of current representations, and compare these to some theoretical notions about landscape drawn from GIScience and linguistics. I will illustrate a number of methods aimed at both delineating and describing landscapes in ways which consider spatial and semantic vagueness, and suggest possible applications of such methods.