Landscape

Ruwenzori Mountains, Uganda, Great Rift Valley. The mountains formed about three million years ago in the late Pliocene, pushed up by tremendous forces originating deep within the earth’s crust.

Reekie Linn ('smoking pool'): clouds of spray rise above the plunge pool when the River Isla is in spate. It is a waterfall formed on the Highland Boundary Fault where hard metamorphic rocks to the north give way to the softer sedimentary rocks of Strathmore. This view is taken looking upriver towards the Bridge of Craigisla.

A landscape means an area of land as one can see it. This includes landforms, flora, fauna and human elements, for instance human activity or the built environment.

According to its meaning, lighting and weather conditions are part of landscape as well. Objects inside the building can sometimes be considered part of landscape as well.

Geology

The landscape is determined mainly by the underlying geology. This can be seen clearly in the East African Great Rift Valley. There almost everything in the landscape is caused by or connected with the pulling apart of Africa which is happening there. Even in Great Britain, a geologically quiet place, the whole landscape can be understood by understanding its geological past.^[1]One geological place is the rain forest

Etymology

The word was borrowed as a painters' term from Dutch^[2] during the 16th century, when Dutch artists began to become masters of the landscape genre. The Dutch word landschap had earlier meant simply “region, tract of land” but now meant “a picture depicting scenery on land”.^[3]

Landscape Media

Autumn landscape in Rybiniszki, Latvia, watercolor by Stanisław Masłowski, 1902 (National Museum in Warsaw, Poland)
A typical Dutch landscape in South Holland
Kukle,Czech Republic.
Pre-Pyrenees and Pyrenees
Medieval Ridge and Furrow above Wood Stanway, Gloucestershire, England.
The Batad rice terraces, The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, the first site to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List cultural landscape category in 1995.
Stourhead garden, Wiltshire, England
Jichang Garden in Wuxi (1506–1521)
Central Park, New York City, US, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
The Djabugay language group's mythical being, Damarri, transformed into a mountain range, is seen lying on his back above the Barron River Gorge, looking upwards to the skies, within north-east Australia's wet tropical forested landscape

References

↑ Fortey, Richard 1993. The hidden landscape: a journey into the geological past. Pimlico, London. ISBN 0-7126-6040-2
↑ The word landschap, came from land (patch or area that comes from the Basquish word landa meaning labored earth) and the suffix -schap, corresponding to the English suffix "-ship".
↑ The English word landscape was first recorded in 1598. 34 years passed before the word is used of a view or vista of natural scenery. This delay suggests that people were first introduced to landscapes in paintings and then landscapes in real life.

Related pages

[Fortey-1] Fortey, Richard 1993. The hidden landscape: a journey into the geological past. Pimlico, London. ISBN 0-7126-6040-2

[2] The word landschap, came from land (patch or area that comes from the Basquish word landa meaning labored earth) and the suffix -schap, corresponding to the English suffix "-ship".

[3] The English word landscape was first recorded in 1598. 34 years passed before the word is used of a view or vista of natural scenery. This delay suggests that people were first introduced to landscapes in paintings and then landscapes in real life.

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