Anders Wästfelt Professor

Contact

Name and title: Anders WästfeltProfessor

Mail: anders.wastfelt@humangeo.su.se

Phone: +468164856

Workplace: Department of Human Geography Länk till annan webbplats.

Visiting address Room X 304Svante Arrhenius väg 8

Postal address Kulturgeografiska institutionen106 91 Stockholm

About me

Professor of Human geography

Research interests

My research concerns the agricultural landscape and the re-valuation of agriculture in society. A central question is which mechanisms are driving change in the organization of agriculture when farming becomes globally integrated. To study the complexity of this question an agricultral historical perspective coupled with a landscape geographical perspective is useful. Theoretically I am interested in classical agricultural economics, relational conceptualisations of space as well as scale and distance issues. Image analysis, especially remote sensing analysis of agricultural landscapes are of a special interest. I have also an interst in temporalities, landscape heritage and agriculture museums.

Research

Currently on-going projects

Navigating the Shifting Scales of Food Preparedness: Societal and Farmers Resistance to Crises

https://www.su.se/english/research/research-catalogue/research-projects/8/navigating-the-shifting-scales-of-food-preparedness-societal-and-farmer-resistance-to-crises

Hyping Agriculture and Transit (HAT) in 15-minute Cities (15mC) – Food-growing public transportoriented communities driving urban transitions as green Proximity Oriented Developments (PODs).

PLUS Change: Participatory Land Use Strategies: Meeting biodiversity, climate and social objectives in a changing world. EU Horizon.

PUBLICATIONS

Working papers

Wästfelt, A. Local soils global food – dilemmas of relativity in farming the common Earth. Fourthcoming on Routledge

Wästfelt, A. Futures agricultural environment. In review

Wästfelt, A. Jansson, U. Re-claiming farming for the futures co-evolution of biodiversity production and agriculture.

Jupiter, K & Wästfelt, A. Function and spatiality; adaptation in open field farming

Wästfelt, A. Archipelago geography - A multicentred landscape concept.

Primdahl, J. et.al. Re-coupling agricultural and rural development – towards new governance approaches to agrarian landscapes.

Publications

2025
Ferrara, V., & Wästfelt, A. (2025). An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image. Geocarto International, 40(1)

A modern agroecology of the long term: Historical olive agroecosystems in Sicily as case study

V Ferrara, A Wästfelt, A Ekblom

Elsevier

2024

Ferrara, V. F Álvarez-Taboada, GJ Burgers, E Corbelle-Rico, M Cordero, ...Scaffolding geospatial discomfort:a pedagogical framwork for cross-disiplinary landscape research. Journal of geography in higher education, 1-11

Wästfelt, A. (2024). Kultivera lantbruksmuseerna? DIVA

2023

Ma, L. Zhang, Q. Wästfelt, A. Wang, S. (2023) Understanding the spatiality of the rural poor's livelihoods in Northeast China:geographical context, location and urban hierarchy. Applied Geography.

Karsvall, O. Jupiter, K. Wästfelt, A. (2023) Fenced open-fields in mixed-farming systems: Spatial organisation and cooperation in southern Sweden during the seventeenth century.  Journal of Historical Geography.

2022

Ferrara, V., Ekblom, A., & Wästfelt, A. (2022). From landscape as heritage to biocultural heritage in a landscape. Landscape as Heritage: International Critical Perspectives.

Ma, L. Zhang, Q. Wästfelt, A. Wang, S. (In Press) Understanding the spatiality of the rural poor's livelihoods in Northeast China:geographical context, location and urban hierarchy. Applied Geography.

Karsvall, O. Jupiter, K. Wästfelt, A. (In Press) Fenced open-fields in mixed-farming systems: Spatial organisation and cooperation in southern Sweden during the seventeenth century.  Journal of Historical Geography.

Ma, L., Wang, S., & Wästfelt, A. 2022. The Poverty of Farmers in a Main Grain-Producing Area in Northeast China. Land, 11(5), 594.

Wästfelt, A. Zhang, Q. 2022. Land without value? Unlocking the zero-lease puzzle in Swedish agricultural transformation. Geography Research Forum

Wästfelt, A. 2022. Swedish agriculture in a changing world 1972–2022. In Living from nature – development and change since the Stockholm Conference in 1972. Swedish FAO Committee, Publication Series 15 ISSN: 1652-9316.

2021

Ferrara, V. Wästfelt, A. 2021. Unpacking Layers of Space-Time Complexity in Land-Use Dynamics. A Case Study from the Olive Agrosystems of Sicily (Italy). GI Forum.

Wästfelt, A. 2021. Landscape as filter - farm adaptation to changing contexts.

Journal of Land Use Science, 1-17.

Wästfelt, A. 2021. Nordiska museets gårdar. Diva

2020

Qviström, M., & Wästfelt, A. 2020. In search of the landscape theory of Torsten Hägerstrand. Landscape research.

Ferrara, V. Ekblom, A. Wästfelt, A. 2020 Biocultural Heritage in Sicilian Olive Groves; The Importance of Heterogeneous Landscapes over the Long Term.

2019

Wästfelt, A. 2019. Ambiguous use of geographical information systems for the rectification of large-scale geometric maps. The Cartographic Journal.

Wästfelt, A. 2019. Sveriges jordbrukslandskap i ett europeiskt sammanhang – en kort introduktion. Landskap – ett vidsträckt begrepp – KSLAT nr 5-2019. Ed. Ihse, M.

Wästfelt, A. 2019. Ungkarlsfenomenet - eller hur tid och tidpunkt spelar skilda roller i olika tider vid förvandling av jordbrukslandskap. Bebyggelsehistoriskt tidskrift nr 77.

2018

Wästfelt, A. Zhang, Q. 2018. Keeping agriculture alive next to the city – The functions of the land tenure regime nearby Gothenburg, Sweden. Land use policy.
Vol 78, pp 447-459. (https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1XPRRyDvM44Kw)

Guiomar, N. et al. 2018. Typology and distribution of small farms in Europe: towards a better picture. Land Use Policy

Wästfelt, A. 2018. Shifts in agriculture praxis- Farm modernisation and global integration, Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food. Ed Zeunert J & Waterman T. Routledge

2017

Wästfelt, A. Eriksson, C. 2017. Det svenska lantbrukets omvandling 1990-2014: Exemplet Uppsala län. SLU Uppsala.

EGA Olsson, E Kerselaers, L Søderkvist Kristensen, J Primdahl, E Rogge, A Wästfelt. 2017. Peri-Urban Food Production and Its Relation to Urban Resilience Sustainability 8 (12), 1340

2016

Wästfelt, A. Zhang, Q. 2016. Reclaiming localisation in agriculture change: A case study of peri-urban agriculture in Gothenburg, Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 47, pages 172-185.

Kuns, B. Visser, O. Wästfelt, A. 2016. The stock market and the steppe: The challenges faced by stock-market financed, Nordic farming ventures in Russia and Ukraine, Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 45, Pages 199-217,

2015

Wästfelt, A. 2015. Re-claiming position: Using local context to visualise interpretations of satellite images in humanities and social science. Journal of art history

Wästfelt, A. 2015. Bonden & framtiden. Byggnadskultur 2.15.

Olsson, A, G. Brukmeier, K, Wästfelt, A. 2015. Pheri-urban agriculture transformations on Gothenburg, Sweden. Case-study report. RETHINK. Rethinking the links between farm modersnisation, rural development and resilience in a word of increasing demands and finite resources.

2014

Wästfelt, A. (red). 2014. Att bruka men inte äga. Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag. Skogs- och lantbrukshistoriska meddelanden nr 61. Kungliga Skogs och Lantbruksakademien. Kungliga Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien

Wästfelt, A (red). 2014. Begagnade landskap. Riksantikvarieämbetet.

Wästfelt, A. 2014. Begagnade landskap (Inledning). Wästfelt, A (red). Begagnade landskap. Riksantikvarieämbetet.

Wästfelt, A. 2014. Landskapets historiska värden i framtidens landskapsvård - sociala och ekologiska effekter av bildandet av Söne mad betesförening. Wästfelt, A (red). Begagnade landskap. Riksantikvarieämbetet.

Wästfelt, A. 2014. Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i lantbrukets historia (Forskningsöversikt) Wästfelt, A (red). Att bruka men inte äga. Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag. Skogs- och lantbrukshistoriska meddelanden nr 61 Kungliga Skogs och Lantbruksakademien. Kungliga Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien.

Wästfelt, A. 2014. Arrendefrågan 1972 till 2010 – två intresseorganisationers perspektiv. Wästfelt, A (red). 2014. Att bruka men inte äga. Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag. Skogs- och lantbrukshistoriska meddelanden nr 61. Kungliga Skogs och Lantbruksakademien. Kungliga Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien.

Wästfelt, A. 2014. Nollarrenden - om samtida värdering av jordbruksmark och landskap. Wästfelt, A (red). 2014. Att bruka men inte äga. Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt till mark i svenskt jordbruk från medeltid till idag. Skogs- och lantbrukshistoriska meddelanden nr 61. Kungliga Skogs och Lantbruksakademien. Kungliga Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien.

2013

Wästfelt, A. Arnberg, W. 2013. Local space context measurements used to explore the relationship between land cover and land use function. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation.

2012

Wästfelt, A. 2012. Framtidens lantbruk – en teoretisk utmaning. I Westholm, E. Alm, S. Palme, J. Att utforska framtiden. Institutet för framtidsstudier, Dialogos.

Wästfelt, A & Saltzman, K, Gräslund-Berg, E, Dahlberg, A. 2012. Landscape care paradoxes. Swedish landscape care arrangements in a European context. Geoforum.

Wästfelt, A. Tegenu, T. Nielsen, M. Malmberg, B. 2012. Qualitative satellite image analysis: mapping the spatial distribution of farming types in Ethiopia. Applied Geography.

Ahlkvist, O. Wästfelt, A. Nielsen, M. 2012. Formalized interpretation of compound land use objects – Mapping historical summer farms from a single satellite image. Journal of Land use Science. 2012, 1–19.

2011

Eriksson, C & Wästfelt A. 2011. Är landskap enbart en utsikt? Två frågor i och med införandet av den landskapskonventionen i Sverige. BHT nr 61.

Jansson, U., Antonsson, H., Bladh, G., Wästfelt, A., & Germundsson, T. 2011. Den regionala mosaiken. In (Vol. s. [206]-221). Jordbruk och skogsbruk i sverige sedan år 1900 : en kartografisk beskriving 2011, Stockholm.

Older publications, selected.

Jansson, U. Wästfelt, A. 2010. Rural Landscape Changes from a Long-term Perspective: Farming, Policy, Economy and Society from 1750 to Today. Jansson, U & Hermelin, B. (ed) In Placing Human Geography - Sweden through time and space. Ymer 2010. Sid 113-141.

Wästfelt, A. 2009. Land-use qualities Identified in Remote-sensed Images. International Journal of Remote Sensing. Vol 30 no 9, pp 2411-2427.

Wästfelt, A. 2005. Satellite Images – A source for Social Scientists? On Handling Multiple Conceptualisations of Space in Geographical Information Systems. A.G Cohn & Mark D.M. (Eds.) Spatial Information Theory. COSIT 2005. LNCS 3693, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. pp 379-396.

Angelstam, P. Boresjö-Bronge, L. Mikusinsky,G. Sporrong, U. Wästfelt, A. 2003. Assessing village authenticity with satellite images: A method to identify intact Cultural Landscapes in Europe. In Ambio Special Issue, Remote sensing for the environment. Ambio.

Academies

The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities 2022-
Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry 2015-

Education and degrees

Professor of Human geography, Stockholm University 2020-
Associate Professor (Docent) in Human Geography 2012-2020
PhD, Continuous Landscapes in Finite Space. Making sense of satellite images in Social Science. Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University. 2004.
Master Thesis Stockholm University 1997
Bachelor Degree in Urban and Regional planning. Stockholm University 1993.

Postdoctoral positions, work abroad

2015-2016. Fulbright visiting scholar at University California Santa Barbara.
2009-2013 Assistant professor. Section for Agrarian history. Swedish University of Agriculture Science.
Stint scholarship Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge Univ, UK vt-03 2003

Supervison

Eriksson Camilla (2013) The Summer Farm as a Political Space: Being a Summer Farmer in the Common Agricultural Policy, defended May 24th 2013. SLU department for Rural development. (deputy supervisor).

Malm Charlotta (2013) A place apart? Debating landscapes and identities in the Shetland Islands, defended Dec 12th 2013. Stockholm : Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2013. Supervisor in final stage april- dec 2013.

Michael Nielsen (2014) Infering Land Use from Remote Sensing Imagery, defended June 11th, 2014. (deputy supervisor).

Brian Kuns (2017) Peasants and Stock Markets, Pathways from Collective Farming in the Post-Soviet Grain-Belt. Defended Oct 27th 2017 (Main supervisor)

Kristofer Jupiter (2020) (Section of Agrarian history, SLU). An efficient farming system – open field systems in 17th century. Defended sept 11 2020 (Main Supervisor).

Li Ma Visiting PhD student 2020-2021 from North East normal Univeristy China.

Ongoing supervision

Johanna Adolfsson, PhD-student in Human geography at SU. A frontier landscape: Judaization of the Naqab. (Main Supervisor).

Oskar Jakobsson PhD-student in Human geography at SU. The sum of all streams - floodplain land use in Southern Sweden 1000-1900 AD. (Main Supervisor).

Vincenza Ferarra PhD-student in Archeology at UU. Long term biocultural heritage in olive growing at Sicily. (deputy supervisor)

Publications

Search publications

A modern agroecology of the long term
Chapter
2025. Vincenza Ferrara, Anders Wästfelt, Anneli Ekblom.
Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems V2:144-V2:159
The persistence of certain biophysical elements in agroecosystems may be entangled with human ecological, social and cultural practices over time. When agroecosystems are conceived as historical processes, ecocultural legacies from the past become today's biocultural heritage, the access key to understanding agroecosystems’ complexity and inner dynamics.Projected to sustainable futures, this chapter describes entanglements between millennial land use practices and environmental variations in present-day historical woody agroecosystems. Privileged access points to the present-past are three “time capsules,” remnants of century-old olive trees (Olea europaea L.) in Sicily, where these ancestral plants have been living for millennia, providing fruits for local communities and playing a crucial ecological role for the surrounding ecosystems.By combining geospatial analysis, written records, ecological knowledge and plant microfossils, we capture new information on the ecological, cultural and social dimensions of these agroecosystem's formation and maintenance along history, contributing to current debates on their sustainable management.
Read more about A modern agroecology of the long term
An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
Article
2025. Vincenza Ferrara, Anders Wästfelt.
Geocarto International 40 (1),
Landscapes with a deep history of land use are the legacy of millennial interactions between ecological, social and cultural elements, which can be investigated to obtain new knowledge about our present-day ecosystems. This paper presents the application of a supervised contextual post-classification technique to extract, from a single orthoimage, geospatial objects (classes) representing different temporalities of the same land use in a historical landscape. With a rural area of Sicily as case study and its century-old olive trees as geospatial ‘control points’, we analyse the degree of category similarity between historica lly contingent classes of the same land use. We map and interpret from present space their dynamics of change and persistence over time, cross-validating our results with evidence from local plant microfossils (phytoliths) analysis. We demonstrate how Earth observation products and contextual geospatial analysis are multidimensional sources of information enriching our understanding of past-present landscapes and their biocultural heritage.
Read more about An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
Scaffolding geospatial epistemic discomfort
Article
2025. Vincenza Ferrara, Flor Alvarez-Taboada, Gert-Jan Burgers, Eduardo Corbelle-Rico, Miguel Cordero, Eduardo Dias, Anneli Ekblom, Stefanos Georganos, Jeff Howarth, Maurice de Kleijn, Tommaso La Mantia, Niels van Manen, Giovanna Sala, Rafael da Silveira Bueno, Philip Verhagen, Anders Wästfelt.
Journal of geography in higher education 49 (1), 76-86
Current environmental crises call for an integrated knowledge of landscapes and their ecosystems in a broader sense. This article presents a pedagogical framework for cross-disciplinary landscape research at postgraduate level. The framework is grounded in the use of geospatial epistemic discomfort as a creative force to develop and enhance inquiry skills able to cross and merge disciplinary boundaries. Developed within the Erasmus+ KA2 project “CROSSLAND”, the pedagogical framework is based on the scaffolding of epistemic discomfort through four key didactic elements: 1) cross-disciplinary group work and open-ended assignment, 2) in-field inquiry as pre-training on space-time, 3) replacement of traditional lectures by student-led seminars, 4) GIS labs centred on the exploration of cross-disciplinary portfolios of geospatial approaches and methods given as worked-out examples. Main results from the evaluation of the framework implementation in a Summer School show how learning cross-disciplinarity happened thanks to a scaffolding that allowed, first and foremost, the socialisation of different conceptualisations of space. While students felt at ease with geospatial epistemic discomfort, we can conclude that spatial cognitive processes are powerful in improving abilities beyond the spatial domain.
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CONTEXTS.py (CS.py)
Article
2024. Vincenza Ferrara, Johan Lindberg, Anders Wästfelt.
MethodsX
The qualitative dimensions of visible features in space can be captured by connecting spatial configurations arranged in a variety of different ways to diverse conceptual spaces. By conceptual spaces, we intend mental concepts describing specific spatial configurations present in a geographical area, defined by the contextual relationships among their constitutive elements. This paper presents a new supervised post-classification method allowing the extraction of semantically complex spatial objects from a single image of the Earth as, for instance, diverse conceptual spaces referring to multiple dimensions of land use (temporal, cultural, social, etc.). Computationally, our method is operationalised by CONTEXTS.py (CS.py), a plugin written in Python for QGIS. CS.py relies on training areas, defined by the user at diverse scales, to identify and extract in the input image conceptual spaces whose spatial contexts have the same spatial features present in the training areas. Applied to a case study on the island of Sicily, where millennial land use dynamics have resulted in a mosaic landscape, CS.py could detect from an orthophoto diverse conceptual spaces of land use in an area ordinarily classified as one land cover, thus expanding the capabilities of geospatial analysis to reach additional qualitative dimensions of information from image data. • CS.py simplifies a supervised contextual post-classification routine in an easy-to-use, practical and accessible QGIS plugin; • CS.py joins a family of tools for supervised object-based classification (e.g. OTB, GRASS), providing, additionally, the possibility to include contextual information as spatial criteria to train the classification routine. • CS.py has broad applications in different disciplines investigating landscape from quantitative and qualitative perspectives, allowing both, as in multiple environments.
Read more about CONTEXTS.py (CS.py)
Fenced open-fields in mixed-farming systems
Article
2023. Olof Karsvall, Kristofer Jupiter, Anders Wästfelt.
Journal of Historical Geography 18-31
The organisation of fields and fences in agriculture that emerged during the Middle Ages and the early modern period was a complex system that combined individual ownership of and communal practices in arable land, meadows and pastures. It was adapted for small and mid-size family-based farming and was a different way to organise agriculture than the medieval estates (demesnes) and the larger coherent fields of the eighteenth century and onwards. The past decade of research in historical geography and economic history has highlighted the origin of this system, which is often referred to as the open-field system; it was open in the sense that it promoted communal farming of primarily arable land. This pre-modern farming system was, however, in many areas a physically closed landscape – a landscape where fences stood out as significant elements. This article investigates the use of fences in a part of early modern western Sweden. The empirical base is a reconstruction of fence-organisations from detailed large-scale maps dating from the mid-seventeenth century. Using historical maps, this study focuses on the collaboration and interaction among farms and settlements. We argue that the open-field system cannot be fully understood without regard to an in-depth analysis of the fences and the institutions holding the complex collaboration together. The occurrence or absence of fences in relation to open-fields involves several questions: What are the characteristics of the fences in the farming systems known as open-field? What can be said about the spatial distributions and connections between the settlements sharing the same open-field? Can agrarian landscapes where fences were prominent elements be considered open-field? The results show that fences appear to be a key factor in understanding settlement patterns and open-fields in Scandinavian regions. A large number of fences created small fenced open-fields. Moreover, the divisions of the arable plots had less importance in the creation of open-fields, which included arable land, meadows and pastures. Instead, cross-settlement collaborations and arrangements are central for the open-fields in the study region. The regional differences within the open-field system provide an understanding of the preconditions and organisation of mixed farming, which combined small-scale arable land cultivation and large-scale pastures.
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