ABSTRACT
The impact of human behavior on the physical environment has long been a primary research interest of human geographers and cultural ecologists. Humans impact the environment by utilizing natural resources and by placing material objects on the landscape, including farms, cities, and buildings. This alters the physical appearance of the natural landscape and affects natural processes. The cultural landscape is thus formed and becomes the tangible chronicle of a cultural group and its agricultural traditions, values and belief systems, settlement patterns, social structures, and political practices (Groth and Bressi 1997; Lewis 1979).
