Landscape

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photograph of a landscape Oeschinen Lake in the Swiss Alps, an example of a highly diversified landscape.

In Physical Geography and subfields like Landscape ecology, and Environmental geography, the technical term landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including physical elements such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements such as lighting and weather conditions, and human elements, for instance human activity or the built environment.

Etymology

The word landscape comes from the Dutch word landschap, from land (directly equivalent to the English word land) and the suffix -schap, corresponding to the English suffix "-ship".

Landscape, first recorded in 1598, was borrowed as a painters' term from Dutch during the 16th century, when Dutch artists were on the verge of becoming masters of the landscape genre. The Dutch word landschap had earlier meant simply 'region, tract of land' but had acquired the artistic sense, which it brought over into English, of 'a picture depicting scenery on land'.

See also

Look up landscape in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• American landscape
• European Landscape Convention
• Geomorphology
• Hardscape
• Landscape ecology
• Landscape history
• Mediascape
• Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape
• Seascape
• Softscape
• Soundscape
• Taskscape

Footnotes, links and references

External links

Landscape Appreciation Society - A relevant group devoted to all things Landscape.

[1] -Raym`s Photosite: beautiful Landscape pictures.

References

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (December 2006)

Footnotes