land degradation & development
Land Degrad. Develop. 20: 669–670 (2009)
BOOK REVIEW
LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS AND VISUALISATION:
Spatial Models for Natural Resource Management and
Planning, edited by C. Pettit, W. Cartwright, I. Bishop, K.
Lowell, D. Pullar and D. Duncan. Lecture Notes in
Geoinformation and Cartography (LNG&C). Springer-
Verlag: Berlin; 2008. ISBN: 978-3-540-69167-9 (hardback),
£128, xxxii þ 614pp.
The book is an assemblage of selected papers presented at
the ‘Place and Purpose—Spatial Models for Natural
Resource Management and Planning’ Conference, Bendigo,
Victoria, Australia, 30th–31st May 2007. It chiefly aims to
showcase a wide range of frameworks, models and tools that
are available for use in researching issues central to natural
resource management. At the same time, some of the tools
are devoted to paving more effective ways of not only
communicating key research findings but also aim to get the
wider stakeholders engaged and contributing to the research
process. The latter is critical if insights from research
outcomes are to be translated into policies to assist
sustainable natural resource management. While some of
the tools presented in the book are well-established, fully
developed and have been widely used, others are still
evolving and thus necessitate further development and
testing before they can make sound contributions. The
research appearing in the book encompasses a discernable
extent of both spatial and non-spatial scales (i.e. from
paddock to regional scale and from exclusively ecological to
socio-economic to a more ‘integrated’ scale). By doing so,
the book allows prospective readers to relate to the level of
analysis that they wish to focus on, while allowing
opportunity to explore new ways of praxis beyond their
comfort zones. Nonetheless, as the title of the book clearly
indicates, most works concentrate on landscape as the unit of
analysis. In addition, most of the research covered in the
book is set in Australian landscapes, although a few
examples from elsewhere can also be found.
The introduction highlights the urgency and the
importance of knowledge management frameworks, spatial
models, decision support tools and visualisation techniques
to support landscape-scale sustainable natural resource
management. The main body of the book follows this, and is
composed of five parts, each consisting of several
contributions that fit well with the particular topic of
concern.
The first part introduces frameworks for effectively
managing natural resources and tools that are available to
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
further translate these frameworks into analysis: catchment
analysis tools, spatial multi-criteria decision making
analysis and a platform for building environmental models.
It also presents a good insight into the kinds of (pragmatic
rather than scientific) pre-requisites for effective avenues to
integrate science with policy making.
The second part begins with a paper highlighting the need
to consider multiple perspectives (as opposed to exclusively
human views) when analysing and visualising ‘landscapes
for biodiversity’. The authors wisely call for approaches that
acknowledge biological (e.g. species movement and
distribution), physical (e.g. soil, geology and climate),
spatial and temporal dimensions. Important tools with strong
ecological foci include those for vegetation condition
assessment at varied scales (from site to regional), for
adaptive management of vegetation, for modelling change
over time of bird habitat resources provided by revegetation,
for using genetic markers to aid landscape management, and
for evaluating scenarios to select conservation or landscape
restoration methods that would bring about the greatest
benefits at both local and landscape levels.
In the third part, special attention is given to ‘socio-
economic dimensions’ that are critical to landscape
management. The authors of the first chapter in this part
challenge the appropriateness of referring to catchments as
boundaries for governing landscape management. They
propose an alternative, yet promising, method to define
‘strategic spatial resource governance’ by fully taking into
account local communities’ interests, landscape homogen-
eity and the scale of the resource management spill-over
effects. Other interesting research in this section includes
presentation of a method for socially characterising and
categorising landscapes and a chapter on a decision support
system for predicting how people with different sets of
values would have different preferences over a range of
scenarios.
The fourth part presents and discusses a variety of
methods and tools for modelling land use change over a
given period of time and for analysing ‘future’ land use
scenarios. The latter can be extended to capture the multiple
impacts that different land use change scenarios may have on
the environment and society, as well as the economy. It is
also noteworthy that within this section, issues associated
with uncertainty in modelling landscapes were acknowl-
edged, and ways to get around these issues were briefly
discussed.
The final part, which readers may find the most
fascinating, is dedicated to the methods and tools that can
670 BOOK REVIEW
be used to effectively visualise landscapes. These have
emerged as a result of further advancement in information
and communication technologies including, but not limited
to, GIS, internet, digital technology and computer games.
Some of the tools have been developed and used to statically
portray landscape configurations. Others have been designed
to allow users to dynamically and interactively make
decisions, and observe the implications of their decisions on
virtual landscapes. For sure, these innovative tools are
promising and potentially helpful in advancing current
understanding about the interactions between human
decision making and other elements of landscape manage-
ment, and on how landscapes may change over time as a
consequence of such interactions. However, more research
has to be invested in the refinement of these tools before they
can be practically useful and produce sound outputs to
further improve science and policy making with regard to
landscape management.
In general, the book is considered worthwhile reading and
is highly relevant for researchers and postgraduate students
with a strong interest in researching landscapes in particular,
and land degradation, natural resource management, and
environmental issues in general. The book potentially serves
as an informative reference point that may even be
accessible for those who have just begun to nurture an
interest in this line of research. However, further consul-
tation of wider references, including other works by some of
the authors of particular chapters of interest, will be
necessary, as many of the technicalities involved in
developing and/or using the tools are not thoroughly
discussed. The book itself, covering such a wide range of
topics, would be relevant to someone interested in purely
ecological research as well as to someone with an interest in
exploring the link between research (science) and decision
(policy) making.
Without doubt, the editors deserve praise for their
arrangement of the diverse contributions into such a logical
order. The use of specialist terms has been kept to a
minimum, which increases the readability of the book.
However, the book would have a greater impact if a final,
rounding-off section had been included that considered
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘what’s next?’ and ‘so what?’ This would help readers to see
the bigger picture beyond working with individual tools, and
could have built on and reinforced what the editors said in
the introduction. Since the application of the tools presented
in the book was mainly in Australian contexts, thorough
discussions on the limitations of and the strategies to modify
the tools for use in other parts of the world would indeed be
very useful. In particular, there has been concern about the
potential bias that visualisation may have, as those elements
of the landscape system that cannot be visualised may
become disproportionately overlooked. Therefore, the
extent to which visualisation can work as an effective tool
for landscape-related research and strategies to minimise
potential biases that it may exert should have been properly
discussed. Furthermore, none of the human decision
making—landscape interaction studies reported in the book
was actually based on experimenting with the respective
tools with real-world land owners or managers. Arguably,
this limits the generalisation of insights that can be drawn
from the findings of such studies. Finally, some visualisation
outputs could have been more effective and communicative
if they were in colour.
In conclusion, some aspects have been unintentionally
omitted from the book, possibly because it is compiled from
conference contributions. However, given the novelty and
innovativeness of a wide range of approaches and tools that
the book has to offer, it is still a worthwhile read!
DOAN NAINGGOLAN
Sustainability Research Institute
School of Earth and Environment
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
E-mail: d.nainggolan@see.leeds.ac.uk
Published online 6 March 2009 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com)
DOI: 10.1002/ldr.914
LAND DEGRADATION & DEVELOPMENT, 20: 669–670 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ldr