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Protected Areas (PAs) are important wildlife refuges and act as climate change buffers, but they may impact human livelihoods, particularly engendering a high risk of negative human -wildlife interactions (HWI). Understanding synergies and tradeoffs among the drivers of overall human vulnerability within PAs is needed to ensure good outcomes for conservation and human wellbeing. We examined how climate variability, HWI, and socio-demographics affect livelihood vulnerability across three PAs in Mozambique, Southeast Africa. We used structured questionnaires to obtain information on livelihood vulnerability and socialecological context -specific variables. We applied principal component analysis to understand synergies and trade-offs between the dimensions of vulnerability and linear models to test the effect of social -ecological drivers on vulnerability. We show that households are mostly vulnerable within PAs due to exposure to climate variability and to HWI, and their low capacity to employ livelihood strategies or to have a strong social network. Furthermore, we show that vulnerability to HWI and climate variability increases with distance to strict protection areas within the PAs and distance to rivers, which implies that proximity to strict protection areas and rivers within PAs still promotes better livelihood conditions than elsewhere. On the other hand, we also found that lower access to infrastructure and other livelihood assets enhances vulnerability, which reflects a trade-off within PAs that potentially limits the benefits of socially inclusive conservation. Our results show that the impacts of PAs, HWI, and climate on community vulnerability should not be viewed in isolation, but instead, conservation and livelihood improvement strategies should reflect their interconnectedness. Although livelihood vulnerability appears to be shaped by these general effects of PAs, it is important also to consider the local PA context when addressing or mitigating livel

Current environmental crises call for an integrated knowledge of landscapes and their ecosystems in a broader sense. This article presents a pedagogical framework for cross-disciplinary landscape research at postgraduate level. The framework is grounded in the use of geospatial epistemic discomfort as a creative force to develop and enhance inquiry skills able to cross and merge disciplinary boundaries. Developed within the Erasmus+ KA2 project “CROSSLAND”, the pedagogical framework is based on the scaffolding of epistemic discomfort through four key didactic elements: 1) cross-disciplinary group work and open-ended assignment, 2) in-field inquiry as pre-training on space-time, 3) replacement of traditional lectures by student-led seminars, 4) GIS labs centred on the exploration of cross-disciplinary portfolios of geospatial approaches and methods given as worked-out examples. Main results from the evaluation of the framework implementation in a Summer School show how learning cross-disciplinarity happened thanks to a scaffolding that allowed, first and foremost, the socialisation of different conceptualisations of space. While students felt at ease with geospatial epistemic discomfort, we can conclude that spatial cognitive processes are powerful in improving abilities beyond the spatial domain.

Phytoliths can be used to reconstruct human-nature dynamics over the long term (from decennial to centennial and millennial time scales) and may capture activities that cannot be reconstructed through other proxies. Phytoliths consist of fossil biogenic silica (BSi), formed in plant organs and then released into the soil with plant decay. When working in environmental contexts where the phytolith signal is highly diluted, as is the case in environments with a long history of land use, animal-plant interactions and open woody environments, the extraction of phytoliths remains a challenge. To address this issue, we developed an efficient method for the extraction of biogenic silica (BSi) from sediments and soils of contexts characterised by the long-term human and animal presence and disturbance, such as remnants of old agroforestry systems. The method we developed has a number of advantages, including: • An easy and time-efficient methodology to perform (with an overall processing time of 1.5/2 days for a batch of 16 samples) • An extraction method free from dangerous chemicals • A method amenable to non-experts without a prior background in lab extraction procedures.

Local comparisons of effects, responses and mitigations to the Covid-19 pandemic are of vital importance inbuilding a sustainable tourism. This is particularly the case for conservancies in Africa which is largely dependent on international tourism. Qualitative interviews were carried out in the Kenya Maasai Mara WildlifeConservancies Association (MMWCA)with landowners, lodge managers and staff, tourism operators, community organisations and NGOs between January and May 2021. The MMWCA is an important case study asconservancies pay lease payments to more than 14,528 landowners through tourism revenues. The results showhow partner conservancies took different paths in securing payments of leases and salaries by rotating staff,attracting international funding and by targeting domestic tourism. Meanwhile, landowners experimented withalternative economic activities such as cattle herding and diary production. The study shows the strength ofMMWCA as a stakeholder partnership to proactively design measures including renegotiation of leasepayments, in soliciting external funding and in re-distributing funding. The positive role of domestic tourismis also stressed. The pandemic brought to the forefront discussions on equity and benefit sharing and on thesustainability of the model itself. Recommendations are given to strengthen possibilities for alternative incomessources and for a diversification of strategies of the MMWCA partners, including the need to stimulate domestictourism as a parallel source of income. These recommendations are also relevant to conservation areas acrossthe African continent

Planting trees is proposed as an important climate mitigation tool, but can be detrimental to biodiversity and livelihoods if not carefully planned and managed, with landscape history and livelihoods in mind. In Madagascar, deforestation is of concern, and a threat to forest-adapted biota. However, much of Madagascar's landscape harbours ancient mosaic and open ecosystems that are home to unique suites of flora and fauna and provide a wide range of ecosystem services. Though guidelines for ecologically and socially responsible reforestation are emerging, the potential role of landscape history and palaeoecology has been generally underemphasised. Here, using Madagascar as a case study, we argue that forest restoration projects need a sound understanding of landscape history that includes a greater integration of palaeoecological data. This would help establish the former composition and extent of forests and also investigate the antiquity of open and mosaic ecosystems. When economic interests are strong, information from palaeoecology and environmental history can help reduce biases when identifying appropriate locations and suites of species for forestation. Furthermore, a reflective approach to landscape history can contribute to restoration projects that integrate cultural and livelihood considerations. A transdisciplinary approach that considers local needs and cultural context can facilitate the design and implementation of restoration projects that share benefits equitably. Underpinning this ambition is a more comprehensive consideration of ecosystem service benefits in a changing climate that includes accurate carbon storage calculations, as well as other ecosystem services including water provision, soil formation and erosion prevention, grazing resources, medicine and cultural components.

The paper outlines the history of research and heritage management of Manyikeni (a Zimbabwe tradition site dated 1200-1700 AD) and the trading station of Chibuene (dated from 400-present). Both sites are located in the District of Vilankulos, in Inhambane Province of Southern Mozambique. Archaeological work has been conducted at both sites since the 1970s with significant participation of local residents and researchers from Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo and external researchers. The paper discusses heritage measures for these two sites including also a newly reported stone enclosure (Zimbabwe) of Ngomene, in Vilankulos, c.56.7km south of Chibuene. We also discuss the heritage and cultural tourism potential of the area in terms of proximity to the marine national park of Bazaruto, for a sustainable heritage conservation program in the wider processes of socio-economic development. We use the Urban Historic Landscape, or HUL approach associated with the notion of the living heritage to meet community needs. This is reinforced by the recently adopted marine cultural heritage approach of the Rising from the Depths Network in Eastern Africa, aiming to benefit communities, living specifically on the coast. The paper argues for an integrated biocultural heritage approach for sustainable conservation through the establishment of “Archaeological Parks” and exemplifies efforts towards these goals on the sites and the possibilities for such an endeavor in the current national cultural and natural legislation.

In many landscapes today, biological diversity is the ecological and cultural legacy of millennial interactions between land use practices and always changing environmental conditions. Thus, landscapes must be seen as heterogeneous, shaped through interacting different temporal and spatial scales. In our contribution we conceptualise biocultural heritage as space-time heterarchies, the endless results of repeated feedback between land use as human ecological process and the response of the ecosystems themselves. We provide the example of the olive intercropping landscape from a rural area of inner Sicily (Cozzo del Lampo hill, Villarosa), and we explore the potential of our conceptualisation for landscape heritage management. The discussion is centred on the acknowledgement of the “ecological function” played by place-based communities, as a key grounding step for the re-appropriation of our ecological engagement with landscape and place.

Shielings are the historically known form of transhumance in Scandinavia, where livestock were moved from the farmstead to sites in the outlands for summer grazing. Pollen analysis has provided a valuable insight into the history of shielings. This paper presents a vegetation reconstruction and archaeological survey from the shieling Kårebolssätern in northern Värmland, western Sweden, a renovated shieling that is still operating today. The first evidence of human activities in the area near Kårebolssätern are Hordeum- and Cannabis-type pollen grains occurring from ca. 100 BC. Further signs of human impact are charcoal and sporadic occurrences of apophyte pollen from ca. AD 250 and pollen indicating opening of the canopy ca. AD 570, probably a result of modification of the forest for grazing. A decrease in land use is seen between AD 1000 and 1250, possibly in response to a shift in emphasis towards large scale commodity production in the outlands. Emphasis on bloomery iron production and pitfall hunting may have caused a shift from agrarian shieling activity. The clearest changes in the pollen assemblage indicating grazing and cultivation occur from the mid-thirteenth century, coinciding with wetter climate at the beginning of the Little Ice Age. The earliest occurrences of anthropochores in the record predate those of other shieling sites in Sweden. The pollen analysis reveals evidence of land use that predates the results of the archaeological survey. The study highlights how pollen analysis can reveal vegetation changes where early archaeological remains are obscure.

Livelyhood assessment data from Limpopo National Park, Mozambique: Anonymised data in excel spreadsheet format from Machamba, Chimangue and Bingo villages. Aonymised and edited as supplmentary to the paper Notelid, M. and Ekblom, A. 2021. Household Vulnerability and Transformability in Limpopo National Park. Sustainability 13(5): 2597; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052597. See paper for details on methodology, Landscape transformation and socio-ecological management, Limpopo National Park, Mozambique