B 2.1 The mobile components of landscapes

[TERCUD]

"In a landscape, there are immobile elements which do not change in a measurable way at the scale of human time – rocks, for instance. Other elements are mobile and circulate.
(i) For some of them, the main component of movements is vertical. The nutrients are moving up from the soil to the leaves, and the organic matter that results from photosynthesis moves down to the trunk and roots. This is true of all ecological systems, whether natural or cultivated. In other cases, the circulation is not perfecctly vertical, but remains circumscribed within a small area.
(ii) The proportion of oblique movements (water running down slopes, or, sometimes, filtering through soil and rocks) and horizontal ones (air, aquatic currents) is also important in ecosystems. Animals keep moving from one point to the other.
Among the human population present in a landscape, horizontal displacements are very significant. In market places people sell the goods they produce and buy those they want for their personal or familial consumption. They exchange information, which is travelling either with the people who bear it, or independently, as written or electro-magnetic messages.
(iii) Most of the moves are local - within the ecological pyramids, for instance. The long range ones are conveyed through lines: roads, railroads, tubes, electric or telephone lines or electro-magnetic waves. Local as well as long range moves are generally unconspicuous: as a result, people often underestimate the role played by the circulation of energy, matter and information in the functioning and shaping of landscapes."

(This is an excerpt from the text by Professor Paul Claval “THE IDEA OF LANDSCAPE”)