ARKUM ( https://www.kulturlandschaft.org/) sees itself as a node in a network of historical cultural landscape research in Central Europe. The purpose of the non-profit association is to promote scientific research, information and education in the field of the history of the cultural landscape, in particular of Central Europe, including the maintenance of the cultural landscape.

Five aspects combine the common interest of its numerous members from all Central European countries: • Genesis and change of the cultural landscape - the cultural landscape is understood to mean the entire environment changed by man in historical times, including all settlement areas • Historical depth - this includes the time span from prehistory through the Middle Ages and the early modern period up to the present with the aim of space-time comparisons • Interdisciplinary collaboration, especially between archaeologists, historians and geographers • Intensive examination of methods and terms of historical cultural landscape research (e.g. settlement archaeological investigations, interpretation of archival documents and maps, and integration of scientific findings) • Inclusion of application - the "Working Group for Applied Historical Geography" deals with the implementation of basic research in planning processes and environmental education. 

In today's modern age, cultural landscapes are subject to strong pressure of change. The intensification of land use (agriculture and forestry, settlement construction, energy generation, etc.) leads to ever more profound changes in the high-quality cultural landscapes. Value-determining characteristics are irretrievably lost - such as historical elements and biodiversity.

As a discussion and research platform for more than 30 partners from the fields of cultural landscape research, the Competence Center for Cultural Landscape (KULT) deals with this problem and develops strategies and solutions to promote sustainable cultural landscape development:  https://www.hs-geisenheim.de/praxis/kompetenzzentrum-kulturlandschaft-kult/.

With the draft of a cultural landscape structure of Bavaria ( https://www.lfu.bayern.de/natur/kulturlandschaft/index.htm), an attempt was made for the first time to structure and describe the diversity of the Bavarian cultural landscape across the board. As a result, 61 cultural landscape areas could be defined. The cultural landscape structure is not a substitute, but a necessary addition to the natural spatial structure. It is intended to help ensure that the cultural landscape heritage is given greater consideration in the most varied of plans - so that Bavaria's unique cultural landscapes do not “lose face”.

Bavaria's landscapes are shaped by diverse natural conditions, but also by thousands of years of human use (settlement, agriculture and forestry, etc.). With the respective type of use, the character of the landscape changed in the course of history. Some epochs have left clear traces that have outlasted the change in landscape. These historical cultural landscape elements are valuable evidence of the country's history as well as archaeological finds or documents.

Historical cultural landscape elements make regions distinctive and convey a sense of home. The website  https://www.lfu.bayern.de/natur/historische_kulturlandschaft/index.htm presents reports on the projects “Pilot Project Upper Franconia West”, “Cultural Landscape Ries”, “Cultural Landscape Bischofsreuter Waldhufen” and “Rafting Landscape Franconian Forest” as well as a “Handbook of Historical Cultural Landscape Elements”.

From 2011 to 2014, under the direction of the Institute for Landscape Architecture at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences, a cooperation project ran in the LEADER regions Middle Isar and Altmühl-Jura with the aim of bringing the local cultural landscape in its typical form and with its characteristic historical elements into the consciousness of the population and to enable optimal landscape planning. For this purpose, the citizens of the project area went into the landscape to search for traces that testify historical uses, rulership and living conditions. These "cultural landscape elements" were recorded, described and documented in the internet portal KLEKs (  https://www.kleks.app//).

Informations of the project you can find under the website  https://www.heimat-erkennen.de/.

The LEADER cooperation project was supported by a total of twelve Local Action Groups (LAGs), the Central Franconian LEADER regions, the Bamberg region and three regions from the Upper Palatinate. The lead was the LAG Südlicher Steigerwald e.V. Cooperation partners were also the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Care, the Middle Franconia District and the Upper Palatinate District. The project was funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forests and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD).

The three-year pilot project that ran until December 31, 2020 (  www.historische-Kulturlandschaft. net ) aimed to enter special cultural landscape features of rural areas in a database in the initially twelve LEADER regions. An open source-based WebGIS database was specially developed for the project, in which the collected cultural landscape elements can be entered and are accessible to everyone ( https://erfassung.historische-kulturlandschaft.net/karte). All objects submitted by users were edited by the project management prior to their publication. The continuation of the cultural landscape database and the editing of the entered data is now carried out under the care of the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Care based in Munich.

As a cultural landscape, the Rhön is not only shaped by natural conditions, but above all a mirror of human economic activity. How has this - man-made - Rhön cultural landscape developed? What traces of historical use can still be seen and experienced in the landscape today? What has survived to this day? Which elements are particularly worth protecting?

The scientific project series "Historical Cultural Landscape Rhön" is dedicated to these questions (  https://www.biosphaerenreservat-rhoen.de/natur/projekte-im-bereich-natur/historische-kulturlandschaft-rhoen/). It documents the cultural and social history of the Rhön for each community. It describes when which region was settled and how the secular and spiritual rulers shaped the landscape. It is also about how the Rhön villages developed, how the land around them was structured and used, and which paths crossed the landscape. In addition, there are answers to the question of what additional income the Rhön population found when agriculture on mostly poor soils did not bring enough to live on. Moreover, the historical cultural landscape elements of the investigated areas were recorded and displayed on a map. The results were summarized in the book series "Historische Kulturlandschaft Rhön", published by Michael Imhof Verlag Fulda for a wider readership.

Cultural landscapes form the basis of regional identity, they form the long-term memory of society and create "homeland". It is therefore important to preserve the characteristics of the cultural landscapes for future generations and to design and develop them responsibly. In order to be able to adequately incorporate the interests of the cultural landscapes into the state planning, the Ministry of Economics, Medium-Sized Enterprises and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia commissioned the regional associations of Westphalia-Lippe and Rhineland to prepare a comprehensive report. / p>

This „Kulturlandschaftlicher Fachbeitrag zur Landesplanung in Nordrhein-Westfalen“ can be downloaded from the following websites:

• Rhineland Regional Association:   https: //www.lvr.de/de/nav_main/kultur/kulturlandschaft/kulturlandschaftsentwicklungnrw/kulturlandschaftsentwicklung_1/kulturlandschaftsentwicklung_1.jsp .

• Regional Association Westphalia-Lippe:   https: //www.lwl. org / dlbw / service / publications / cultural landscape

The report also contains a cultural landscape structure of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is also offered in the form of a WMS map service, as well as a map of the important cultural landscape areas. In addition, special articles on the topic of "Preserving cultural landscape development" for the regional plans Cologne, Ruhr, Düsseldorf and for the Cologne-East area, a checklist for taking cultural heritage into account in planning and a handout for taking cultural heritage into account in environmental assessments are available as PDF files.

The LWL offers on its website under the title "Basics and recommendations for regional planning. Expert contribution of the LWL monument preservation, landscape and building culture in Westphalia" brochures of the administrative districts of Detmold, Märkischer Kreis, Olpe, Siegen-Wittgenstein, Soest and Hochsauerlandkreis and the Münsterland. In addition, an introduction to the topic of historical cultural landscapes using the example of Westphalia-Lippe is available as a PDF brochure.

In which landscape do you want to live in the future? In your opinion, how should the cultural landscape in the Central Saxony district be further developed in the future, and how can “scenic bridges” be built between the different sub-areas of the district? The cultural landscape project in Central Saxony, initiated and supported by the Central Saxony District Office, addressed these and other questions. It was funded by the Free State of Saxony within the framework of the FR-Regio funding guideline and worked on in the period from November 1, 2013 to December 31, 2014 by the TU Dresden, Institute for Landscape Architecture.

The project was based on the assumption that the district of central Saxony has an extremely diverse and high-contrast landscape mosaic, which represents a very important capital of the district and holds a multitude of development potentials that is still to be developed in the increasingly fierce competition between the regions. • What are the challenges for the rural district's landscapes from demographic change, climate change and the energy transition? How can the district face these challenges actively and with foresight? • What makes the unmistakable nature of the individual sub-areas of the district and how can they be further profiled in terms of unique selling points? • Which specific landscape-related projects should be initiated in order to make the district and its communities fit for the future and to strengthen the internal networking in the district?

The full final report and the maps can be downloaded from the following website:

 https://www.tu-dresden.de/bu/architektur/ila/lp/forschung/forschungsprojekte/abgeschlossene-forschungsprojekte/kula-ms

The pressure to change the German landscapes is so great that two thirds of the landscapes will change within just one generation. The enormous pace of change makes the great need for action for a landscape-compatible design and spatial planning clear. In the cooperation project between the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research (BBSR) and the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR), transformation processes and control options were analyzed and processed in three brochures.

The aim of the project was to explore innovative potentials and control options for spatial and landscape planning in the design of cultural landscapes in current transformation processes, and to test and creatively develop them further using the example of three regions. The aim was to provide new impulses for strategies and models of cultural landscape development in the nationwide discussion with recommendations for action and best practice examples.

The focus was on the following questions: • How have cultural landscapes changed in the past? What are the emerging trends? • What options do spatial and landscape planners have to control the changes in a nature-friendly and proactive manner? • What options do current regional and landscape framework plans offer? • What innovative approaches and projects are there in the regions to shape the changes?

The research project was edited by the TU Dresden (lead) and the University of Kassel and published in the form of several brochures:

• Shaping the landscape change! Potentials of landscape and spatial planning for the model development and design of cultural landscapes against the background of current transformation processes (Volumes 1-3). Download from:  https://www.tu-dresden.de/bu/architektur/ila/lp/forschung/forschungsprojekte/abgeschlossene-forschungsprojekte/Landschaftswandel-gestalten

• Design cultural landscapes! For the future handling of transformation processes in spatial and landscape planning (1 brochure). Download from:  https://www.bfn.de/themen/planung/landschaftsplanung/veroeffentlichungen.html

Landscape protection is one of the core tasks of nature protection and landscape management. Landscapes must therefore be permanently protected or qualified both in terms of natural and cultural heritage and in terms of their functional appreciation in terms of experience and perception, including landscape-related recreation.

The R + D project documented here had the task of presenting a nationwide backdrop of significant landscapes based on nature conservation. The result is two BfN scripts 516 and 517. Both volumes contain methodological information. Profiles describe every single landscape. In addition, the 451 individual landscapes are shown on a map at a scale of 1: 750,000. A download is possible from the following website: https://www.bfn.de/themen/planung/landschaftsplanung/veroeffentlichungen.html

The aim of the research, funding and model project "Digital recording and presentation of cultural landscapes in Rhineland-Palatinate (KuLaDig-RLP)" is to systematically record and visualize the cultural diversity in Rhineland-Palatinate by digital and multimedia processing of selected objects, and to make it usable for everyday life. The project is carried out by the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University of Koblenz-Landau and funded from 2019 to 2021 by the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Interior and the University of Koblenz-Landau. In 2019, nine pilot municipalities of various regions, sizes and characteristics were funded, an additional eleven will be added in 2020, and another ten in 2021. Using the example of these pilot municipalities, models for the systematic digitization and utilization of the cultural heritage in small and large municipalities are to be developed and procedures and guidelines are to be made available to all Rhineland-Palatinate municipalities in order to put the informations of their cultural heritage in the knowledge platform KuLaDig.

Details can be found on the website  https://www.kuladigrlp.net/ueber-das-projekt/.

As a principle of spatial planning according to § 2, Paragraph 2, No. 5, the preservation and development of (historical) cultural landscapes represent a mandate for regional planning. Cultural landscape creates regional identities and emotional ties between people and "their" space. It is also an essential basis for tourism development and, as a soft location factor, it contributes to economic, regional and municipal development. The state has therefore had an appraisal drawn up to specify the historical cultural landscapes that are important nationwide. In order to ensure that renewable energies are used in a manner compatible with the cultural landscape, it also contains stipulations, justifications and representations of exclusion areas and restrictions for the expansion of wind energy use.

The report can be downloaded from the website:

 https://mdi.rlp.de/de/unsere-themen/landesplanung/kulturlandschaften/