The Natural Landscape

Bruce Eitzen LA

The Natural Landscape Map comprises three Map Layers. Ideally it could have more but we have made do with three for now.

Coastal Landscapes, Marine and Seascapes

As this is a developing product and mapping concept, perhaps this layer is one of the more challenging

While our coastal landscapes receive much attention and acclaim, land dwelling humans seldom think much further than the beach, yet our oceans occupy 70% of the earth's surface and are not only the source of our fish and fresh air, but home to a growing marine dump of the world's plastic pollution that is washing up on our shores.

For the meanwhile, we have divided up the non-terrestrial world into three categories, namely:

Coastal Landscapes: being the landscapes found around the coastal zone, not measured or defined too precisely, but at the transition between land and sea.
Seascapes: As a trial we will define seascapes as the surface of the sea and above, what can be seen and experienced on the surface of the oceans.
Marinescapes: We will define as the area under the surface of the sea, so underwater or submarinescapes per se.

You can find more information on Coastal Landscapes, Marine and Seascapes here.

Terrestrial Landscapes

Terrestrial Landscapes are probably the most familiar part of the landscape for most of us, indeed, is the Landscape we think about primarily along with Coastal Landscapes when we think about Natural Landscapes. We can also think of this section as natural geography being all about:

Landscape Features like mountains, rivers, plains, etc; as well as
Landscape Regions like the Karoo, the Namib, the Tsitsikamma, the Kouga;
Landscape Types such as deserts, grasslands, swamps, etc, which may or may not have culturally associated names such as the given landscape regions.

You can find more information Terrestrial Landscapes here.

Conserved Landscapes

Nationals Parks, Nature Reserves, Conservancies etc

This category has already been well represented on The Landscape Map with well over 800 National Parks, Nature Reserves, Forest Reserves, Conservancies and an amazing fifty types of Conserved Landscapes - perhaps that would be a better name for this layer! So be it; The Landscape Map just changed a clumsy Map Layer name with the coverall description of Conserved Landscapes in writing this section.

You can find more information on Conserved Landscapes here.

There is another type of Conserved Landscape/s which leads us into the next section under Cultural Landscapes.