Seeing Landscapes with PGIS

Landscape is “the traits, patterns, and structure of a specific geographic area, including its biological composition, its physical environment, and its anthropogenic or social patterns.” (US-EPA 2006). Landscapes are built on multiple understandings, their spaces are overlapping, boundaries are fuzzy, limits are permeable, their space is not linear. Local spatial knowledge (LSK) and indigenous spatial concepts are key to purposeful landscape analysis – because they reflect local communities’ material capabilities and represent beliefs and values, they are built on accumulated direct experience, and are a virtual resource owned also by disadvantaged groups.

This paper reviews the potentials for and the appropriateness of representing spatial knowledge by participatory mapping and PGIS within the concepts of landscape and landscape management. Participatory mapping and PGIS are specially attuned to ‘seeing landscapes’ because of the modes of operationalisation and procedures employed.

The objective is to integrate the strengths of P mapping with PGIS for applying to landscape management
• Pmapping revolves around information about local interests and priorities which should be representative of social communities, as well as individuals;
• it involves multiple processes of people’s participation in information identification and selection;
• it contributes to capacity-building: groups can be empowered towards effective landscape management by involvement in PGIS processes;
• in particular Pmapping elicits local (and indigenous) knowledge of the landscape elements.
• Standard GIS software has special value because of functionalities - most obvious is layering, statistical functionalities for measuring spatial features, and manipulating proximity limits, buffer zones.
• When the PGIS approach builds communicability between outsiders and insiders, this legitimises the value of endogenous knowledge and language, and makes GIS tools more acceptable to local users.