Category Archives: output

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Landscape Policies Case Study: Flanders

The European Landscape Convention seeks to encourage citizens and public authoritieslandscape convention logo to implement policies and measures at local, regional, national and international level for protecting, managing and planning landscapes throughout Europe.

GEOLAND aims to provide resources for to Higher Education students to study how European Landscape Convention (ELC) is implemented and adopted in different EU countries.

This case study examines the national, regional and local issues concerning landscape policy in the Flanders Region of Belgium.

Find out more about the Belgian Landscape Awards of the Council of Europe

A report on European Landscape policy has been produced. Find out about the European Policy Report

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Landscape Policies Case Study: Spain and Aragon

The European Landscape Convention seeks to encourage citizens and public authoritieslandscape convention logo to implement policies and measures at local, regional, national and international level for protecting, managing and planning landscapes throughout Europe.

GEOLAND aims to provide resources for to Higher Education students to study how European Landscape Convention (ELC) is implemented and adopted in different EU countries.

This case study examines the national, regional and local issues concerning landscape policy in Spain and the Aragon Region.

Find out more about the Spanish Landscape Awards of the Council of Europe

A report on European Landscape policy has been produced. Find out about the European Policy Report

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Landscape Policies : Bulgarian Case Study

The European Landscape Convention seeks to encourage citizens and public authoritieslandscape convention logo to implement policies and measures at local, regional, national and international level for protecting, managing and planning landscapes throughout Europe.

GEOLAND aims to provide resources for to Higher Education students to study how European Landscape Convention (ELC) is implemented and adopted in different EU countries.

This case study examines the national, regional and local issues concerning landscape policy in Bulgaria.

Find out more about the Bulgarian Landscape Award of the Council of Europe

A report on European policy has been produced. Find out about the European Policy Report

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Piloting the landscape app and GIS platform in Zaragossa, Spain

In October 2022 a two-day Transnational Partner Meeting was held in Zaragoza, Spain. Participants spent one day in meetings, discussing the progress of the project with special attention to testing a landscape survey app. geoland-app

The aim of the landscape survey app is to enable the nature of the landscape to be evaluated in situ by students and by the general public. Its use proved to be very straightforward. By opening the app, GPS locations could be saved, together with responses to a short landscape survey and digital photographs of the location could be gathered and shared.

This app thus permits data gathering of landscape character assessment (LCA) results in the field, linked to a GIS platform where the data gathered is presented.platform-satellite

Landscape character assessment is the process of identifying and describing the variation in character of the landscape.

This helps identify and explain the unique combination of elements and features that make landscapes distinctive.

The character, types and areas can be described and mapped to  show how the landscape is perceived, experienced and valued by people. It also allows changes in landscape to be  monitored, for example due to climate change or human impact, and policies to protect distinctive areas to be put in place.

Either follow the link or scan the QR code to visit the Landscape Character Assessment online survey app to add your own data to the GIS platform..QR for Survey 123

On the second day, a field visit to a NATURA 2000 site close to Zaragossa was organised in order to beta test the app and platform. Find out more about Natura 2000 in Aragon

.During the visit five different important locations of landscape value were visited

The first location was a local landfill which serves almost 800.000 habitants of the Zaragoza region for waste deposits. On the other hand it offers a food source for numerous animals and birds, such as vultures, storks and seagulls. The landfill is located on the border of the NATURA 2000 protected area.

The visit continued to the Saltlake of Mediana (La Salada de Mediana) which has huge ecological, historical and scientific value because of the salt extraction activity during the past centuries.

Codo municipality was the next stop, in particular in ornithological reservation El Planerón, where the guide form SEO BirdLife organisation, responsible for the reservation, explained the project, the relationships with other agents in the landscape management and presented to the participants some results of the work done in the reservation.

Then the group stopped in Fuendetodos, birthplace of Francisco Goya, great Spanish painter, where windmill parks with massive energy potential have been installed. The purpose was to evaluate their impact on the landscape and compare it with the benefits that it can bring.

Finally, the viewpoint on Las Planas, next to Cadrete, was visited. From this spot, participants could appreciate the views over the Ebro river depression, the plateau, Zaragoza city, the dry steppe landscape, wind parks and the Moncayo massive in the background.

Explore the Storymap to see the location and results of the field visit

The field visit confirmed the  survey app and GIS platform developed for landscape evaluation showed great functionality and produced very relevant results, so in following months it will be used in different European locations with students and the public.

Try out the GEOLAND survey app  –  Visit the GIS platform

Contact the project of you wish to be involved or find out more.

GEOLAND Greek Multiplier Event held

@Atlantis Engineering SA is one of the Greek partners participating in the GEOLAND Project. In June 2023 they organised a Multiplier Event in Thessaloniki.

The Multiplier Event is a specific dissemination activity that focused on presenting the first two outputs of the project, the Educational Handbook and the Web-based platform.

Moreover, the 3rd intellectual output, Policy Recommendations, which is currently being developed, was presented and there was also reference on the students’ online gallery and the digital education readiness assessment, the last two outputs of the project.

The participants, who came from various disciplines, showed great interest on the topics and a very interesting discussion took place during the event.

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Partner meeting tests GEOLAND app

geoland meeting During two days of October 2022, the GEOLAND Transnational Partner Meeting was held in Zaragoza, Spain. All the participants spent one whole day meeting, discussing the latest progress of the project with special attention on the mapping app developed by University of Ghent.

This app permits data gathering in the field and its aim is to allow the landscape to be evaluated in situ by students or even by the public. The use is very simple, everyone just has to open the app, save the GPS location, respond to a short survey and make a photo, which completes the collected information.

Next day, a field visit and app beta testing was scheduled. Five places with important landscape value were visited.

The app developed for the landscape evaluation was shown to present great functionality and very relevant results, so in following months it will be used with students and the general public.

Explore the Storymap to find out more.


 

 

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GEOLAND Handbook and Technical Annex available in 6 languages

The GEOLAND project seeks to improve and promote the engagement of Higher Education (HE) institutions, professors and students, in monitoring actions leading to effective decision-making for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC).handbook cover image

With this in mind the project has published an Educational Handbook and Technical Annex in English, Bulgarian, Dutch, Greek, Italian and Spanish.

These are available for download from https://www.geolandproject.eu/outputs/.

The Handbook includes state-of-the-art information and materials on learning and teaching perspectives, methodologies including citizen science, and Landscape Character Assessment related to the European Landscape Convention.

The Technical Annex complements the Handbook in order to provide details of the five methodological stages important for Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) by using GIS and public participation.

The five stages offer information, advice, resources and tools to carry out a Landscape Character Assessment for Natura 2000 or other sites of interest, are:
i) Purpose definition
ii) Desk-based data collection
iii) Field-based data collection
iv) Classification and
v) Overall evaluation

Training resources are now being developed to support university teachers and academics to implement the approach with their students.