Landscape Conflicts vs. Land Use Conflicts: Scientometric Evidence and Network Analysis

The scientific literature presents multiple cases where the terms “landscape conflicts” and “land use conflicts” have been used interchangeably. This study examines their differences from within the perspective of a scientometric analysis of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Thus, differences are identified in the contexts by which these two termsappear in the literature. While underscoring the central role of geography in this analysis, it becomes evident that using these two terms interchangeably without due caution is epistemologically erroneous, since they have been used in different kinds of publications, by different organizations, in different scientific journals and in co-occurrence with different keywords. Among the most interesting results are: (a) the literature on landscape conflicts appeared later than that of land use conflicts; (b) the most important scientific publication outlets for “landscape conflicts” and “land use conflicts” are the journals “Biological Conservation” and “Land Use Policy” respectively; (c) the overwhelming majority of papers that relate to both of them have been published by authors from developed countries; (d) the organizations that have published more documents on landscape conflicts are more than thrice as connected at the top level than those that have published on land use conflicts; (e) the term “geography” occupies the most prominent place among all keywords in both domains (otherwise said, both landscape conflicts and land use conflicts are primarily topics of geographical analysis); (f) the keywords “ecology” and “wildlife” are the most recent and the most frequently occurring ones in the literature of “landscape conflicts”, while “agriculture” and “environmental resource management” are those that appear most recently and more frequently in the domain of “land use conflicts”.