| Abstract | This paper seeks to present the methodological approach of a case-studyat a local scale, in the south of Portugal, where the European Union
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has significant impacts in terms of
environment, socioeconomic and landscape aspects.
The municipality of Mertola is located in the south-eastern part of the
Alentejo Region, in a marginal area in relation to socio-economic
parameters and agricultural production. As in the region as a whole, the
dominant land use system is the Montado in a diversified pattern, which
has in the last decades been subject. to successive significant changes,
raising questions as to future landscape quality, identity and the
required management. As in other European rural areas, the
transformations in agriculture and the productive function resulted in
changes in the landscape, which have impacts also on other functions
such as conservation, environment balance, recreation, life support and
preservation of cultural identity. These other functions attract each
day more attention as a possible set of alternatives uses in marginal
areas of Europe, such as Mertola. This actual context requires thus a
landscape management based on integrated policies for the rural world,
following the new perspectives of the CAP but also based on a deep
knowledge of local landscape dynamics and requirements for preservation
of identity. This project intends to evaluate and understand:
(a) the changes that have occurred in the municipality in the last
decades; and
(b) how they have affected landscape pattern and also people's
perception and connections to this landscape identity.
The intent is to build up proposals for a more integrated and locally
adapted formulation of CAP objectives and instruments. This paper will
present the changes in landscape pattern and character registered in the
study area for the last decades, the interdisciplinary methodology
adopted, as well as the results of the first phase of the project.
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