Abstract :
[en] Anthropogenic disturbances impact the whole biosphere, at least indirectly, and are of major concern in various disciplines and policies. To tackle it, most studies, specific to their thematic, create their own reference framework without connection with related purposes in other disciplines. This results in a plethora of terms and concepts that in turn impedes addressing that issue on a comprehensive way as well as complementarity between studies.
Here, we clarify and synthesize the most frequently employed terms to characterise human impact on the environment (anthropisation, naturalness, hemeroby, novel ecosystem, analogous ecosystem, climax, etc.), their synonyms, the nuances and relationships between each of them, as well as the concepts used to designate the responses given by humans to environmental disturbances (restoration, management, conservation). We go on reviewing the methods used to assess anthropogenic changes, exploring different branches of ecology and geography. The strengths and weaknesses of the existing approaches are then used as a basis to develop a new analytical framework: we propose an action-oriented type of naturalness, and we develop a general methodology to quantify landscape anthropisation. Our methodology combines object-oriented and gradient analyses. Moreover, it is based on the assessment of ecosystem disturbance, landscape configuration and dynamics as well as on easily acquired data sets.
Our integrated approach of the concern could be at the basis of land planning, environmental restoration and management practices as well as policies.
