Landscape Perceptions, Similarities, Differences and Overlaps of Agricultural Landscapes and Their Effects on Evaluation and Management

Our world is changing fast, and rural exodus remains an issue. People are losing connection with nature, and, as a result, farming knowledge in the sense of the entity between soil–ecology–economy and production is fading. But also, the connection between farmers, ecology, and the land has been lost—with many societal consequences. The cultural part of agriculture is vanishing, while some city dwellers and nations still uphold their romantic ideas about rural life. The European Union has many programs and subsidies to support people in living in the countryside, but they seem insufficient to solve the problem. This brings us to the situation where defining agricultural landscapes is becoming valuable. EUCALAND, a non-profit association (European Culture Expressed in Agriculture) elaborated a questionnaire to define agricultural landscape types. These questionnaires were filled by national experts of the EUCALAND Networks from the following countries: Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. The number of questionnaires analysed is based on the number of national expert members who declared that the analysed agricultural landscape is present and worth evaluation in the given country. The number of countries involved is changing accordingly. The minimum number of countries involved in the analyses is five (in the case of fishponds); the maximum was eleven (in the case of traditional orchards). So far, 10 landscape types have been evaluated by the EUCALAND Network: terraced landscape, enclosed landscape, arable landscape, dispersed settlements, fire landscape, meadows, water meadows, pastures, orchards, fishpond landscape. All landscape types except dispersed landscapes were included in this article, as the evaluation of dispersed settlements is not finished yet. During the work, the issue of overlap between the categories arose. In this paper, the authors provide a draft list of overlapping agricultural landscapes, along with a list of the reasons and physical/geographical places of these overlaps. Furthermore, the authors discuss the possible evaluation and management issues, and their effects on protecting our valuable agricultural landscapes.