KLEKs

Visualization and recording app for cultural landscape elements in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. With "KLEKs – Cultural Landscape Elements Register," the first geoinformation system in Germany was developed that digitally records historical cultural landscape elements using a holistic methodology. Since 1999, over a quarter of a million datasets have been recorded. KLEKs is not an official database, but rather sees itself as a component of a platform for civic engagement in the preservation of livable, diverse natural and cultural landscapes – thus, as a means of increasing the democratization of nature conservation and landscape planning. KLEKs can be used locally by interested parties. This in no way calls into question the usefulness of existing official databases for nature and monument conservation. Quite the opposite: suitable information from KLEKs (e.g., on previously neglected but worthy of preservation landscape elements) should also be incorporated into the official databases. KLEKs is not an isolated solution; it can be characterized in particular by the concepts of community principle and self-organization, as well as citizen proximity, openness, and transparency. By leveraging the synergy potential of local initiatives and previously often scattered information, access to a shared, constantly growing, and improved database is enabled. Through this community approach, we aim to achieve a comprehensive and complete recording of historical cultural landscape elements. Of course, the cadastre will never be complete and must be continuously updated. For several years now, the recording of elements has been supplemented by a recording of so-called cultural landscape parts and cells, i.e., sub-areas of the cultural landscape. We see this as a preliminary step towards a building block for comprehensive cultural landscape planning in the spirit of the European Landscape Convention of 2000 – an international agreement for the conservation of landscapes suitable for human habitation. Although the Convention has not yet been signed by the Federal Republic of Germany, it has been generally recognized in almost all other European countries.