Inventorying human-made objects: A step towards better understanding land use for multifunctional planning in a periurban Swiss landscape

Multifunctional periurban landscapes are omnipresent in today's world. These landscapes are a challenge to the scientific approach based on land-use and land-cover units because the same territory can serve several uses and because the spatial extents of many uses (e.g. hiking) do not correspond with land-use and land-cover units. In periurban Swiss landscapes we furthermore observe many human-made objects that represent land uses which are not included in land-use datasets. In order to address this issue, we studied type and frequency of human-made objects in the multifunctional periurban Canton Aargau and analyzed land use they represent. We randomly selected 48 1-km(2) plots and sampled them comprehensively. We recorded 1012 objects in 115 classes. There are a few classes with many objects (e.g. 196 benches, 134 farm buildings) and many classes with one or two objects. We identified nine use-categories with recreation, infrastructure, agricultural, and spiritual being the most important ones. Overall the research showed that the study area is furnished with many and highly diverse human-made objects. Knowledge about type and frequency of these objects clearly adds an additional layer of information to current land-use data. With further analysis on use (type, intensity, and spatial extent) data on human-made objects are likely to contribute to a better modeling and understanding of multifunctional periurban landscapes and thus facilitate integrated landscape planning. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.