The European Landscape Learning Initiative: Past and Future Environments and Energy Regimes shaping Policy Tools

Project Information

TerraNova

Grant agreement ID: 813904

DOI

10.3030/813904

Project closed

EC signature date 13 September 2018

Start date 1 April 2019

End date 30 September 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 4 082 398,20

EU contribution

€ 4 082 398,20

Coordinated by

STICHTING VU
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TerraNova (The European Landscape Learning Initiative: Past and Future Environments and EnergyRegimes shaping Policy Tools)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2023-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Landscapes provide essential services to humanity including water, food, energy, and clean air. But more than being simple providers of natural resources, landscapes have immeasurable value as cultural, scientific, educational, recreational, and spiritual resources. Despite their importance to humanity, many landscapes and terrestrial ecosystems are presently threatened by a combination of proximal impacts such as deforestation, land degradation, uncontrolled (sub)-urbanization, and human induced global change. TERRANOVA aims at improving our diachronic long-term understanding of landscape histories and land use strategies in Europe over a deep time perspective. Regional and continental syntheses will be used to anchor a new generation of landscape and climate change models which include the effects of past human actions and generate scenarios for future landscape management and rewilding.
TERRANOVA represents a strong interdisciplinary and intersectoral co-production of knowledge, collaboration, innovative teaching, and supervision and working experience with multiple data types in the research programme. TERRANOVA contributes to identifying major previous shifts in resource use and energy regimes and provide options and scenarios for the future transition to a low carbon society. There is consensus that the intensity of management and impacts of land management on natural systems today is unprecedented. This leads on to consideration of themes of sustainability and societal impact upon landscapes in the 21st century. From this view TERRANOVA considers the knowledge of past energy regimes, their transitions and landscape interactions as essential components in understanding the present transition to a low carbon society. Guiding this final reporting marks the endwork of TERRANOVA researchers to contribute to this urgent need for landscape transformation, most notably on the road to 2030.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We evaluated methods to assess the deep history of Europe’s cultural landscapes and corresponding changes in coupled human-nature interactions within human energy regimes and their transitions, to rethink outcomes of human environmental interactions over the past three energy regimes on the present-day landscape in Europe, and to inform future energy transitions from a long-term environmental and social perspective. We have designed landscape management strategies to inform current planning initiatives, for the transition to a low-carbon society.
To assess the deep history of Europe’s landscapes and natural disturbance regimes on land cover, a vegetation openness model for the Eemian interglacial has been reconstructed using the REVEALS model, and Holocene landscape reconstruction algorithm regional vegetation models have been constructed. Maps of landscapes modified by hunter-gatherers in the Iberian Peninsula provided an example data for the first version of the digital Atlas. This is based on the continental test ABM model and these preliminary maps will be updated and provided on the European scale. Regional, continental and common databases of archaeological data from three different Field laboratory areas as well as continental scale have been updated. Also, the concept of energy regimes has been further stablised as a comparative framework to describe human-environment interactions. We produced a common geoarchaeological database in order to plan continental Agent Based Models for energy regimes and transitions and plan for maps that will inspire landscape management of the future.

We also contributed to the Atlas to harmonize individual data entries for the digital atlas production. The digital Atlas production has started by contracting a commercial partner that will produce and publish the final version. In a single atlas with multiple layers has started to be integrated from archaeology, (palaeo-) ecology, geography, earth sciences, (palaeo-) climatology, rewilding and landscape management. By combining climate and landscape modelling we will gain new insights into the importance of climate versus humans in the development of European landscapes over the pre-industrial Holocene. We explored past shifts in resource use and energy regimes in Europe and assessed the HYDE3.2 capacity in historical socio-ecological transitions estimation. We modelled historical and future trajectories of megafauna development as well as the past and future climate change events and trajectories.
We researched future policies in European landscape management, such as futures and scenarios for (abandoned) agricultural land. A systematic review of alternative trajectories in Europe has been compiled. Also spatially explicit scenarios useful for land management have been evaluated, including lessons from an ex-post evaluation of land use projections as well as trade-offs between culture and nature in landscape development. Alternatively, TERRANOVA also links directly to rewilding to European landscapes. We anticipate on expert-based assessment of rewilding indicates progress at site-level, challenging for upscaling. We developed a framework to assess the costs and benefits of rewilding ecosystems to define conservation management priorities. In addition, we are defining a framework for rewilding European landscapes for the sustainable use of land resources.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

TERRANOVA made progress beyond the state of the art by:
- consistently integrating concepts and tools of different disciplines and research to address sustainability challenges related to land use and landscape management.
- analyzing various types of data, including ecological, archaeological, economic, and geographic data to identify transitions in energy regimes.
- assessing an intelligent variety in landscape scenarios with alternative trajectories resulting in sustainable land-use policies, including scenarios for (abandoned) agricultural land.
- identifying and analyzing the ecological, economical and societal potential of rewilding in Europe and displacement to allow for a more holistic understanding of the impact for the low carbon society.
- producing two white papers, organising two public events (one in person, one digital) and organising a successful 1st stakeholder meeting demonstrating that science is not (only) for scientists, but aims at helping land managers in their practices to reach the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals.

The final results of the project are:
- 14 Individual Ph.D. theses published, submitted and in manuscript.
- N papers published and submitted, n papers in manuscript and 3 white papers
- Developed a reconstructed deep historical past of humans, plants, animals, and climate identifying energy regimes and transitions.
- Published a digital atlas of landscape histories related to people, climate, plants and animals through time and their use of energy.
- Published a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) titled "Integrated Landscape Analysis: Addressing Biodiversity and Climate Crises.
- Developed a new approach, tools, and protocols of landscape management in Europe, developed with local to international stakeholders, to be specified in grounding rewilding ecosystems to define conservation management priorities and determining solutions for abandoned (agricultural) land
including trade-offs between culture and nature in landscape development.

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