Natural landscape

Biodiversity

Key topics Global 200 Key Biodiversity Areas Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Processes and outcomes Adaptation BioWeb Deforestation Extinction Genetic erosion Genetic pollution Global warming Habitat fragmentation Holocene extinction event Mutation Sustainability

Biodiversity Biodiversity hotspot Biorisk Diversity index Ethnic diversity Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis List of environmental issues List of environmental topics List of biodiversity databases Megadiverse countries Monodominance Natural landscape Unified neutral theory of biodiversity

Scientific topics Applied ecology Biocomplexity Biodiversity Biogeography Bioinformatics Conservation Biology Ecology Ecosystem diversity Ewens sampling formula Gene pool Natural environment Nature

Fields and applications Agricultural biodiversity Agroecological restoration Biodiversity informatics Ecological economics Ecological restoration Habitat conservation Insect biodiversity Nutritional biodiversity Reconciliation ecology Sustainable forest management

Practices Biodiversity banking Conservation Commons Forest farming Green Revolution Monoculture Nature conservation Satoyama Sustainable development Wildlife preserve

Organizations 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership BIOPAT - Patrons for Biodiversity Centres of Plant Diversity Global Biodiversity Information Facility International Institute of Tropical Agriculture International Union for Conservation of Nature National Biodiversity Network NatureServe rECOrd (Local Biological Records Centre) World Conservation Monitoring Centre World Forestry Congress

Initiatives Convention on Biological Diversity International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources... Millennium Seed Bank Project Seedbank World Network of Biosphere Reserves

Awareness 2010 International Year of Biodiversity 2011-2020 UN Decade on Biodiversity International Day for Biological Diversity Living Planet Index Wild Solutions

Category: Biodiversity Related topics

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A natural landscape is the original landscape that exists before it is acted upon by human culture.^{[note 1]} The natural landscape and the cultural landscape are separate parts of the landscape.^{[note 2]} However, in the 21st century, landscapes that are totally untouched by human activity no longer exist,^[3] so that reference is sometimes now made to degrees of naturalness within a landscape.^{[note 3]}

In Silent Spring (1962) Rachel Carson describes a roadside verge as it used to look: "Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year" and then how it looks now following the use of herbicides: "The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire".^[4] Even though the landscape before it is sprayed is biologically degraded, and may well contains alien species, the concept of what might constitute a natural landscape can still be deduced from the context.

The phrase "natural landscape" was first used in connection with landscape painting, and landscape gardening, to contrast a formal style with a more natural one, closer to nature. Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) was to further conceptualize this into the idea of a natural landscape separate from the cultural landscape. Then in 1908 geographer Otto Schlüter developed the terms original landscape (Urlandschaft) and its opposite cultural landscape (Kulturlandschaft) in an attempt to give the science of geography a subject matter that was different from the other sciences. An early use of the actual phrase "natural landscape" by a geographer can be found in Carl O. Sauer's paper "The Morphology of Landscape" (1925).^[5]

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