![]() Today, virtually anybody can practice this genre of photography with their smartphone. Their studies may suggest ways that will help us protect the delicate balance of Earth's ecosystems.Portraiture is arguably one of the most popular types of photography. By studying natural and cultural landscapes, geographers learn how peoples activities affect the land. Pollution such as acid rain often speeds up the weathering, or breakdown, of Earth's rocky surface. The cutting of forests exposes more soil to wind and water erosion. Many human activities increase the rate at which natural processes, such as weathering and erosion, shape the landscape. The Three Gorges Dam project has displaced more than 1.2 million people and permanently altered the flow of the Yangtze River, changing both the physical and cultural landscape of the region. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, in Yichang, China, is the world's largest electric power plant. Dams can change a natural landscape by flooding it. Dikes and dams were built to keep water from these areas, now used for farming and other purposes. Water from the North Sea was pumped out of certain areas, uncovering the fertile soil below. An example of human impact on landscape can be seen along the coastline of the Netherlands. People and the Natural Landscape The growth of technology has increased our ability to change a natural landscape. The mountains in the park symbolize the link between the Maori and the physical environment. Tongariro National Park in New Zealand is an associative cultural landscape for the Maori people. Its significance is an association with spiritual, economic, or cultural features of a people. An associative landscape is much like an organically evolved landscape, except physical evidence of historical human use of the site may be missing. The last type of cultural landscape is an associative cultural landscape. Mongolian herders still use the rich river valley for pastureland today. The Orkhon Valley has been used by Mongolian nomads since the 8th century as pastureland for their horses and other animals. The Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape, along the banks of the Orkhon River in central Mongolia, is an example of an organically evolved landscape. An organically evolved landscape is one where the spiritual, economic, and cultural significance of an area developed along with its physical characteristics. The second type of cultural landscape is an organically evolved landscape. The Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the southeast of Cuba, near Santiago, is an example of this type of cultural landscape. The first is a clearly defined landscape designed and created intentionally by man. The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO (the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization) defines a cultural landscape in three ways. The international organization protects these sites from destruction, and identifies them as tourist destinations. Since 1992, the United Nations has recognized significant interactions between people and the natural landscape as official cultural landscapes. They can be as different as a vast cattle ranch in Argentina or the urban landscape of Tokyo, Japan. People and the plants they grow, the animals they care for, and the structures they build make up cultural landscapes. Cultural Landscape A landscape that people have modified is called a cultural landscape. Even desert landscapes can vary: The hilly sand dunes of the Sahara Desert landscape are very different from the cactus-dotted landscape of the Mojave Desert of the American Southwest, for instance. A desert landscape, for instance, usually indicates sandy soil and few deciduous trees. Lakes, streams, soils (such as sand or clay), and natural vegetation are other features of natural landscapes. A natural landscape is made up of a collection of landforms, such as mountains, hills, plains, and plateaus. ![]() Schluter was the first scientist to write specifically of natural landscapes and cultural landscapes. ![]() Some geographers, such as Otto Schluter, actually define geography as landscape science. An artist paints a landscape a geographer studies it. Famous Dutch landscape painters include Jacob van Ruisdael and Vincent van Gogh. Painters ignored people or scenes in landscape art, and made the land itself the subject of paintings. Although landscape paintings have existed since ancient Roman times (landscape frescoes are present in the ruins of Pompeii), they were reborn during the Renaissance in Northern Europe. Geographers have borrowed the word from artists. The term comes from the Dutch word landschap, the name given to paintings of the countryside. It consists of the geographic features that mark, or are characteristic of, a particular area. A landscape is part of Earth's surface that can be viewed at one time from one place.
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