Landscape

Articles

• Agrarian system
  8 November 2013, by L. R.

  This concept identifies any form of agriculture as a “system” of interactions between the establishment and management of a cultivated ecosystem, the agrarian structures (land ownership patterns and landscapes) and the production system (combinations of arable and/or livestock production and the production means implemented in terms of techniques and practices).
  From agrarian structure to farming system
  The older of these two concepts is that of the agrarian structure, used (...)

• South
  8 November 2013, by B. B.

  The South is one of the four cardinal points. Like its opposite, the North, it enables definition of «latitude», between the North Pole and the South Pole, while East and West indicate longitude. These astronomical markers enable the coordinates of a point to be specified, giving the precise localisation on the earth’s surface. However other meaning have been added on to this first meaning, which of course remains valid, so that today in common language the word is related to (...)

• Homogeneity
  6 October 2004, by D. P.

  The notion of homogeneity describes the greater or lesser equality of values of a variable or of a combination of features in a geographical set. Parameters of statistical dispersion, such as variance, measure its converse, heterogeneity.
  The homogeneous region is a type of region defined by a greater similarity among the units that compose it than with units belonging to other regions. Very different and more or less complex criteria may be used in order to identify homogeneous regions. (...)

• Terrain
  25 January 2006, by B. E.

  A French term, ‘terrain’ (terrain / ground / field) , used in social science and in natural science to designate elements of the lithosphere (e.g., ‘sedimentary terrains’) as well as the place, and by extension the subject,of research. For numerous researchers, ‘in the field’ activity represents one of the essential dimensions of their disciplinary method. In these disciplines, there has been a transfer from the lithologic, ‘terrestrial’, and (...)

• Wetlands
  1 February 2014, by L. G.-G.

  Wetlands are transition zones, boundary areas between the terrestrial «environment» and the aquatic environment. This interface status means there are constant variations in time and space in these zones, and a very wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic environments are found. Their main characteristics are the presence of water at least part of the year, the presence of hydromorphic soils, and the presence of hydrophilic vegetation, adapted to submersion or to soils saturated in water. (...)

• Rurality
  14 December 2013, by L. R.

  As a set of collective representations of the characteristics that make up a form of identity and functioning specific to rural areas, rurality belongs to the town-country dyad, with recent changes in perceptions, practices, and modes of governance in these spaces. Classically the term rurality (commoner in French than in English) refers to 1) the characteristic of being "rural", the characteristics of rural spaces; -2) "a set of values, a culture specific to the rural environment" or to (...)