The landscape taxonomic pyramid (LTP): a multi-scale classification adapted to spatial planning

Recent decades have witnessed the burgeoning of diverse international treaties on landscape (European Landscape Convention = ELC, 2000; Latin American Landscape Initiative = LALI, 2013). Their influence leads to a growing need for landscape classification in all signatory countries. In Spain, the ELC has encouraged the incorporation of landscape to land planning. As a result, concepts and methods have been put forward integrating taxonomies and inventories within a common hierarchical structure. This trend is sponsored by epistemic currents conceiving landscape as a continuous cognitive object, whose semblance is modulated by the scale of contemplation. Simultaneously some pragmatic requirements arise from the need to frame landscape policy to fit different spatial spheres for decision-making and public participation; recent instrumentation and automation developments push in the same direction, although landscape contains an irreducible core where subjectivity and expert opinion are dominant factors. Such are the circumstances leading to the present proposal, whose ambition is to revive the discussion on landscape classification focusing on subsidiarity. A multi-level taxonomic procedure is described, where landscape description offers the opportunity to relate levels of land use and landscape policy decision-making to appropriate landscape unit levels.