How does a human-environment system (an ‘eco-cultural’ system; in other words, a landscape) respond to change? Many of the challenges facing cities in mitigating, adapting and developing resilience to climate change are linked at landscape scale. Flood risk downstream, land use upstream. Water supply, water consumption, waste and pollution. The ecological impacts of changes in land management on a particular site may be complex and emerge over long time periods and across a range of indicators beyond environmental data, such as political changes and economic conditions. Scaling these impacts from one site to a whole catchment introduces complicatedness as natural (ecology, geology, etc) and human (ownership, capacity, attitude) boundary conditions vary from place to place. To understand and ultimately to manage climate change impacts on eco-cultural systems, we need to be able to sense and monitor at ecosystem scale: we need to develop ‘smart multifunctional landscapes’.

In this talk we introduce the Sheffield Lakeland Partnership (SLP) and the Landscape Laboratory, with its mission in supporting complex interdisciplinary research questions targeting the evaluation of responses to management interventions or changing boundary conditions over long periods of time. We report on the current status of the SLP, identifying the main priorities of SLP partners, and in the methodological approach underpining the development of an ecosystem health monitoring platform to support smart multifunctional landscape management for the 10-year of the SLP around the Upper Don River catchment, South Yorkshire.