European Landscape Character Initiative

Client: European Commission
Period: 2003-2005e: Accompanying Measures FP5

Co-ordinated from Alterra, Wageningen, this project examines the usefulness of landscape character assessment to link existing regional/national scale approaches with a large scale European view. This is to support future policy implementation of European landscape conservation measures. The outputs are as follows:

• To provide a systematic review on state-of-the-art approaches in landscape character assessments and to analyse the corresponding policy framework for landscape conservation
  
• To generate a core set of landscape indicators for wider policy implementation
  
• To develop a draft of a European landscape typology displayed in the form of a map.

ELCAI takes 14 national approaches across Europe to demonstrate the use of landscape character assessment (i.e. the Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Spain).

Practical recommendations for the development of EU landscape conservation and development policy will be generated by regular interaction with regional stakeholder groups throughout the lifetime of the project.