**5. Conclusions**

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Ecosystem Restoration decade between 2021 to 2030, aiming to halt the degradation of ecosystems and restore them to achieve healthier landscapes. Landscape Architecture is an interdisciplinary discipline helpful in attaining those goals through planning and design

## *Landscape Architecture Framed from an Environmental and Ecological Perspective*


#### **Table 4.**

*Potential land uses for the Centre region of Portugal, area and percentage.*

restoration in different contexts and scales, from rural to urban, from inland to coastal. The ecological-based planning methodologies contribute to better landscapes by starting from the knowledge and spatialization of natural processes. As part of an ecological-based planning methodology, working with green infrastructure allows the ecological integrity of the landscape, increasing the number or quality of services provided by the ecosystems and defining restoration actions and locations.

The Centre Region of Portugal has a severe problem of inappropriate land use. Since the end of the 19th century, the oaks and chestnut trees were replaced by

*Contributing to Healthy Landscapes by Sustainable Land Use Planning: A Vision for Restoring... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99666*

#### **Figure 7.**

*Landscape transformation plan for the Centre region of Portugal.*

maritime pine and eucalyptus. The number of fires and their severity increased, the land is continually degrading, and biodiversity loss increases. Applying an ecologically based landscape plan to prioritize restoration actions at the landscape scale is necessary to reverse this situation. The FIRELAN model was applied to the Centre Region to establish a vision for a healthier landscape. According to the results, 35% of the Centre Region should have restoration actions.


*Contributing to Healthy Landscapes by Sustainable Land Use Planning: A Vision for Restoring... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99666*


**Table 5.**

*Transformation action, area and percentage of Centre region case study.*

Subsequently, the eucalyptus area must drop from 17% of the Centre Region area to 5%, and the maritime pine from 22–6%. The results also show that agriculture could increase from 23–35% of the Centre Region. In the restoration actions, the native species should be used in more than 24% of the case study, especially in the headwaters systems and streams where mixed woods and riparian galleries should be developed.

The landscape transformation plan contributes to the definition of adequate policies to tackle ecosystem restoration through landscape and land use planning.
