Landscape Laboratory 2.0: Exploring Eskelunden as a Critical Zone Observatory in the Anthropocene

How to maintain a minimum of decent common institutions if we have no land in common, literally no common ground (Latour, 2016)? Since its initiation in the early 1990s,the landscape laboratory in Alnarp, Sweden, has inspired the creation of a series of related experimental sites in Scandinavia where researchers and practitioners can collaborate on design experiments in 1:1. While this has led to new insights into how urban woodlands can be planned, established and managed in order to make room for recreational experiences the aim of this paper is to broaden the scope of landscape laboratories by bridging the concept of landscape laboratory with the understanding of ‘Critical Zones Observatories’ (Brantley, 2017, Arenes, Latour & Gaillardet, 2018).Recent multi-disciplinary research describes the Critical Zone (CZ) as the thin, porous and permeable layer between the top of the canopy and the ground (Latour, 2016). CZO’s points to well-instrumented field sites, ranging from a few hectares to large watersheds, where multi-disciplinary research is carried out with the aim to share instruments, data, and models to provide a close description of the complex dynamics of highly heterogeneous regions of the Earth in a time when human activity is radically transforming them.Through a discussion of the latest landscape laboratory currently under development on Eskelund, a 30-hectare urban-industrial woodland placed in the Aarhus River Watershed in Aarhus, Denmark, the aim of this paper is twofold:On the one hand, it aims to explore if and is so how the concept of Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) can help broaden our understanding of landscape laboratories in order for them to meet the demands and challenges we face in the Anthropocene.On the other hand, it aims to bring spatial and sensory-aesthetic aspects into the discussion about CZO’s. One of the problems researchers currently face in picturing Critical Zones (CZ) is precisely to give it a shape (Arenes, Latour & Gaillardet, 2018). Compared with the immensity of the geophysical globe, the intricacies of the CZ vanish from view, illustrating very well the limit of what could be called the ‘planetary view’ of the Earth.