Overview on agricultural landscape indicators across OECD countries

With the development of both a conceptual framework and the identification of practical indicator for assessing agricultural impacts on landscapes, the OECD has initiated an operational approach for measuring changes in the structure, management and values of landscapes with clear orientation towards political and economic targets. From this perspective, landscape functions and values are not longer considered to be by-products of coincidental bio-physical conditions and management regimes, but are interpreted as conscious societal demands towards the supplier or producer ? namely the local farmer. The paper intends to use the existing experiences of OECD countries for identifying the main directions in landscape indicator research and application with regard to the overall objectives, namely a consistent and operational indicator assessment that allows comparing the impact of agriculture on the landscapes throughout all OECD countries. In order to provide the reader with some points of references, the paper starts off by reviewing the implementation targets for OECD landscape indicators on the basis of recognised landscape definitions and projects with special attention to current experiences in Landscape Character Assessments and the development of national and international landscape typologies. Drawing upon the references provided in the fist part, a comparative analysis of landscape indicator assessments deriving from selected examples from OECD countries provides the basis for final conclusions and recommendations