Nicola Arndt und Matthias Pohl - Neobiota

25%
6%
0%
1%
2%
1%
4%
0%
19%
42%
U7
F29+F31
F32+F31
F105
F104 Fagus only
Figure 5b: Proportions of woodland mapping units in the UK: proportions within the protected area network.
Who should make the decisions about which elements in vegetation complexes are actually favoured
in protected or developing landscapes? Very often in the UK, it is wildlife or landscape design
professionals who determine such choices, using their expert knowledge. Alongside such ecological
understanding, a key feature of the Groundwork ‘Changing Places’ programme is to involve local
communities in determining the design and direction of post-industrial restoration schemes. Here, the
Vegetation Map of Europe may have a crucial role to play in developing simple graphics showing
options for the different vegetation complexes that are possible within particular landscapes. In this
way, informed choices can be offered to local residents and users of a site and interest groups can
negotiate the costs and benefits to them of the various alternatives. Developing such a sense of
ownership of future landscapes will be essential for their sustainability.
5 Cultural resonances within future landscapes
Darwen Parkway has a past and part of its history is cultural – the interactions between the landscape
and previous owners and users of the site. In the British landscape, it is often impossible to disentangle
these cultural elements from the dynamic processes that have been at work within the mapping units
and they contribute strongly to the local distinctiveness of places. However, there is a common
tendency when speaking of cultural landscapes to assume that they are always an inheritance from
former times. A more flexible definition of cultural landscapes would see them as landscapes whose
character and sustainability are in some way dependent on culture and which yield cultural benefits.
Incorporating such a vision into the application of the European Vegetation Map for the development
of restored cultural landscapes is a further challenge for us. In the UK, we have begun to explore these
possibilities through the ‘Future Landscapes’ programme of the World Wide Fund for Nature. On the
edge of Wakefield in northern England, there is a complex area of suburban housing, factories and
goods stores, farmland, motorways and railways, typical of many of the industrialised parts of the UK
at the turn of the 21 st century. These days, only a few fragments of woodland and some hedgerows
F77
F8
F2
F1
D50
377