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Combining facilitated dialogue and spatial data analysis to compile landscape history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2010

DAVID H. DUNCAN ,
GARRETH KYLE  and
DIGBY RACE
DAVID H. DUNCAN*
Affiliation:
Landscape Logic Commonwealth Environmental Research Facility and Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability, and Environment, 123 Brown Street, Heidelberg 3084, Victoria, Australia
GARRETH KYLE
Affiliation:
Landscape Logic Commonwealth Environmental Research Facility and Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability, and Environment, 123 Brown Street, Heidelberg 3084, Victoria, Australia
DIGBY RACE
Affiliation:
Landscape Logic Commonwealth Environmental Research Facility and Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Elizabeth Mitchell Drive, PO Box 789, Albury NSW 2640, New South Wales, Australia
*
*Correspondence: Dr David Duncan e-mail: david.duncan@dse.vic.gov.au
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Summary

Successful reconstruction or restoration of formerly cleared landscapes depends on land use history and its legacies. Programmes developed without consideration of these legacies may fail to be effective and lack credibility. However, compiling landscape histories is not simple; our participatory workshops with long-term local residents combined spatial data on landscape change with facilitated conversations to compile a history of landscape change. Timing and extent of key environmental and socioeconomic drivers of woody vegetation cover change since European settlement were established. Some drivers of clearing were relatively well-known, such as drought, or clearing for surface mining and pastoralism. However, others, including important interactions like prolonged drought intersecting with declining wool prices, were less known. These workshops verified provisional data, tested focus and methods, and identified critical time periods for further investigation. The workshops were a powerful transdisciplinary research tool that enhanced the understanding of researchers and participants beyond expectations. Other researchers should consider the general approach when assembling landscape history as a basis for documenting the degree and causes of change.

Keywords

facilitated dialogueinterdisciplinaritylandscape historyland use changelocal environmental knowledgenative vegetationparticipatory mappingparticipatory research
Type
THEMATIC ISSUE: Interdisciplinary Progress in Environmental Science & Management
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 37 , Issue 4: Thematic section. Interdisciplinary Progress in Environmental Science and Management , December 2010 , pp. 432 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010

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