Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Landscape Studies: Potential and Limitations

Abstract

Some personal thoughts are discussed based upon the author’s experience of landscape research as a geographer to whom the holistic character of landscape as the result of natural processes and human activities is obvious and thus the interdisciplinary approach as well. The growing demand for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary landscape research is recent and is an attempt to reintroduce lost skills. Interdisciplinarity was lost when scientific disciplines were specialising and society became too complex to be comprehended as a whole. The scientific specialisation develops parallel to the economic specialisation and the market-oriented competition. These processes change landscapes but also the way research is done. Interand transdisciplinarity are often used in a very pragmatic way that is when it is convenient for getting funding, strengthens the position of one’s own discipline or helps promotion. Also, landscape sciences hardly receive a solid position in the academic world. Managing the landscape values and planning future landscapes demands applied research and transdisciplinarity seems most appropriate in this field. Many reasons make real transdisciplinary difficult to achieve. Many landscape sciences are young and still have to develop a common theoretical basis. In applications, many contradictory interpretations are passed on to the public and the decision makers. Therefore, they easily rely upon their own direct experience of the landscape, that is the scenery, and use a completely different set of concepts and language than scientists do. Their position in transdisciplinary research is sometimes ambiguous. As commissioners of applied research they are partners and evaluators at the same time. Also, policy goals about landscape are still very vague.