The fourth dimension in landscape analysis: changing of heritage and ecological values in the Évora cultural landscapes.

Abstract

Time is one of the most important driving forces in Landscape Ecology. Time along with geosystem, biosystem and socialsystem determines landscape heterogeneity which reveals itself in different patterns and functions. Cultural Landscapes are the result of the interactions between man and environment along time. Évora (the pre-roman Ebora), the most important town in Alentejo province (Southern Portugal) is involved by a cultural landscape where not only archeological sites and old built structures (walls, roads, bridges houses, etc.) of several epochs are present, but also old parcel networks and specific agro forestry pastoral systems, the montados, exist. Many of the limits of those parcels are materialized by vegetation galleries playing an important role in what concerns the landscape ecological quality of the area. The work developed is a comparative study of the quality of the Évora cultural landscape between 1958 and 2007. This study is based on the interpretation of vertical aerial photos from 1958 and 2007, and on the use of GIS as a tool for the spatial and temporal analysis. The main goals are: • To understand the contribution of time and human history in landscape structure; • To study the changes from 1958 to 2007 in ancient cadastral systems and landscape ecological structure: focused in montados and ecological corridors • To measure the contribution of ancient cadastral systems to the actual ecological structur