Shifting water-land relations: Understanding heritage through a landscape approach in the proposed biosphere reserve at Lake Hjälmaren

Abstract

The Lake Hjälmaren landscape is defined by changing relationships between water and land over time and has been formatively shaped by human activity in the modern era. The last 150 years have seen a succession of wide-scale interventions to control and regulate the flow of water through the landscape, and water-land relations continue to dominate contemporary policy issues and stakeholder interests. This thesis employs a landscape approach to investigate the entanglement of natural and cultural heritages in the contemporary Lake Hjälmaren landscape. In the context of the current process to nominate the area as a UNESCO biosphere reserve, this thesis explores the potential of these heritages for contributing to a more integrated management of the Lake Hjälmaren landscape going forward.