Landscape Identity, Well-Being, and Climate-Driven Disturbances in Southern Sweden

Climate-driven disturbances, including changing water levels, increased precipitation and flooding, intensified storms, and water shortages and droughts are threatening the sustainability of communities in southern Sweden. However, our understanding of how individuals experience and adapt to such disturbances is limited, especially as it relates to how place theory, and in particular landscape identity, can help foster enhanced well-being for vulnerable communities. The objective of this study is to understand how individuals of Skåne, Sweden identify with their local environment, and how that identity has changed, or will be changed, as a result of a changing climate. A better understanding of people-place relationships is needed; specifically, how people identify with local landscapes because of the long-standing body of knowledge related to place identity, and the growing scholarship on the use of landscape as a conceptual framework for climate adaptation and mitigation, especially supporting well-being.