Nodes of a peri-urban agricultural landscape at local level: an interpretation of their contribution to the eco-structure

Abstract

The ecological value of some fine-scale landscape elements tends to be overlooked when they are found in highly human-influenced landscapes, such as peri-urban agricultural ones. These landscapes usually fall beyond the scope of the defined categories of landscape protection, and are thus mapped as areas of little or no ecological interest in the context of extensive analysis. In this paper, we present a method for assessing and visualizing the existing nodes in the field pattern of a peri-urban agricultural landscape. Nodes are identified from the field pattern and characterized according to the presence of relevant features and land uses from the viewpoint of their ecological functions. The method is applied in the Vega del Guadalfeo (south of Spain). Our results show an innovative map of the Vega which may be interpreted as its eco-structure; a model based on nodes to represent the ecological value of the peri-urban agricultural landscape.

Keywords:

• node
• peri-urban, agricultural landscape
• eco-structure
• vega

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Regional Government of Andalucía under Grant (BOJA 50, 12/03/08). Special thanks go to Prof. Marc Antrop for his valuable feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript presented in the IALE-PhD course held in Manchester in 2013. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments. Many thanks to A. L. Tate for revising the English text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Regional Government of Andalucia [grant number BOJA 50, 12/03/08].