The role of an international treaty in creating over time a sustainable network for interdisciplinary landscape approaches

Abstract Context. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe represents the first international treaty that envisage all aspects when planning European landscapes. Through this convention, public authorities have been encouraged to adopt policies and measures at local, national and international level in order to protect, manage and properly plan landscapes in a sustainable manner. Objectives. Our study aims to provide a better understanding of the landscape governance research trends by using an innovative methodology to highlight ways to improve and optimize ELC implementation. Methods: For this, we analyzed published articles in international journals directly connected to ELC implementation between 2000 and 2020 (n=400). We use bibliometric indicators (i.e., publications, authors affiliations) and co-occurrence analysis with overlay visualization in time (i.e. keywords), in order to discover the landscape research trends and evolution in the past 20 years. Furthermore, we extracted 119 articles that we review considering for each article the assigned different attributes in order to perform a more detailed analysis of the ELC aspects covered in research. Results: The findings of our innovative analyses show the key player in promoting the European Landscape Convention principles in the research field, along with the evolution in time of the most common trends of ELC by identifying the perspectives of landscape conservation in the future.Conclusions. This paper provides insights for integrating novel technologies and innovative landscape approaches in the future and for the landscape sustainability.