ABSTRACT
Landscapes are the result of the interactions between humans and natural factors and, as a result, are subject to continuous transformation: visually, socio-economically, ecologically and culturally. Landscape is a complex concept that has been studied by many disciplines and perspectives. From a subjective (or perceptive) perspective, a landscape can be analysed as a socio-cultural representation created by a particular society. From an objective (or “neutral”) perspective, a landscape can be considered as the visible or perceptible part of an ecosystem, the approach often adopted by landscape ecologists (Forman and Gordon 1986; Burel and Baudry 2001). In this chapter, we approach changing landscape values by focusing on changes in social metabolism, which we define as ‘the particular form in which societies establish and maintain their material inputs from, and outputs to, nature; the modes in which they organise the exchange of matter and energy with their natural environment’ (Fisher-Kowalsky and Haberl 1994: 3). To describe and illustrate this approach, we focus on the dismantling of the organic agro-ecosystem in the region of Galicia (Spain). Our study looks at the concept of an organic agro-ecosystem, its dismantling, the interrelations between the socio-economic and environmental aspects of agro-ecosystems and the analysis of energy and material flows (González de Molina and Guzmán Casado 2008; Tello et al. 2008).
