Den stadsnära kustens landskapsobservatorium: metodutveckling för medborgarforskning om natur- och landskapsförändringar längs stränder i bebyggd miljö

This document reports on the project The urban coastal landscape observatory, which has been fi-nanced by the Environmental monitoring and assessment programme Built environment at SLU. The purpose is to develop and test methods to involve the public in gathering knowledge about landscape changes. The focus is on a certain type of landscape, coastlines in a built-up environment. A pilot project has been carried out in collaboration with the Marine Knowledge Center in Malmö. The project relates both to the emerging field of citizen research and to the parallel ongoing devel-opment of citizen involvement methods in line with the European Landscape Convention. The pro-ject supports how citizen observations can be used to create increased knowledge and awareness of landscape changes. It also describes changes of urban coastlines and points out that knowledge about landscape changes is important to enable a conscious and sustainable development of the coast. Because of the many values at stake, the many goal conflicts and the complexity of the coastlines, there is a pressing requirement for monitoring this development. The diversity of interests and values and the complexity of the issues also actualize the need for knowledge exchange and cross-sector collaboration.