Natural scenery, fields, buildings, villages, factories and mines, cities, means of transportation and roads, as well as people and costumes constitute a synthesis of cultural phenomena. Cultural landscape is a landscape caused by human activities, which reflects the cultural system characteristics and geographical characteristics of a region. Since the 1920s, the term "cultural landscape" has been widely used. Sol, C.O., in the book Landscape Form published by 1925, thinks that cultural landscape is the result of human culture acting on natural landscape, and advocates studying geographical characteristics through actual observation of ground scenery and cultural geography through cultural landscape.
The formation of cultural landscape is a long process. In every historical era, human beings have exerted influence on the natural environment according to their own cultural standards, making it a cultural landscape. Due to the migration of ethnic groups, the cultural landscape of a region is often formed by more than one ethnic group. Therefore, American geographer D.S. whittlesey put forward the concept of "successive possession" in 1929, and advocated that the historical evolution of regional cultural landscape should be explained by the different cultural characteristics left over from a region in history.
In addition to some concrete things, the content of cultural landscape has an "atmosphere" that can be felt but difficult to express. It is often related to religious teachings, social concepts and political systems, and it is an abstract impression. This feature of cultural landscape can be clearly reflected in regional characteristics. Gottman (J.), a French geographer, also suggested that a region should be identified by its scenery, which should include intangible cultural landscape in addition to tangible cultural landscape.
There are many factors that form cultural landscape, and it is very important to study and analyze these factors for regional research. For example, in 1963, British geographers J.E. Spencer and R.J. howarth compared the agricultural and cultural evolution of three modern agricultural areas (American corn belt, Philippine coconut tree area and Malaysian rubber plantation), and obtained six factors that formed these agricultural cultural landscapes: psychological factors, induction and reflection to the environment; Political factors, land distribution and division; Historical factors, nationalities, languages, religions and customs; Technical elements, tools and capabilities of land use; Improvement of agronomic elements, varieties and farming methods; Economic factors, laws of supply and demand and profits. Comprehensive analysis of these elements to divide agricultural cultural areas.