Historic landscapes today are changing gradually or abruptly, and the abrupt changes have caused the loss of much historic information. How to identify and protect the significant evidence of dynamic landscapes is a question that must be answered by each cultural community. This article establishes a decipherment process—an operational guide for landscape assessment in China. This is a methodology using European methods integrated with traditional Chinese ways of landscape appreciation, providing an effective approach to translate the cultural landscape framework into the conservation inventory. Using Slender West Lake as a case study, the decipherment process has expanded the existing landscape investigation theory using the factor of artistic conception to integrate intangible values into the assessment process. It has also established a unit-based method to classify and represent historic landscapes.

Although the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme has great potential for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals, it faces a continual lack of on-the-ground community-level tools. This paper explores the potential for community-level intervention to guide the evolution of rural landscapes under the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme. This community-level intervention comprises three phases (knowledge coproduction, perspective planning and community action) and nine stages (village representative assembly, internalising knowledge workshop, field trip and casual interviews, knowledge demonstration, joint fieldwork, perspective discussions, tangible landscape element design, intangible landscape element coordination, and effectiveness evaluation). Our case study, Dragon Tail Village, reveals that community-level interveners should facilitate community development by recognising the important role of rural communities—co-owners of heritage sites—and rural landscapes—sets of attributes with heritage value. Our findings therefore improve the understanding of the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme’s driving rationale for community development.

With the repaid development of Building Information Modelling (BIM), many scholars began to explore the BIM-adaption in landscape field. Landscape Information Modelling (LIM) is the corresponding concept created and used in landscape architecture discipline. However, cultural landscape heritage, as a special cultural heritage category, have specific objectives, principles and methodologies in conservation and management. It is necessary to explore an integrated information framework to facilitate the digital management of cultural landscape information. The aim of this paper is to explore an integrated information framework, which I call a ‘Heritage Landscape Information Model (HLIM)’, to facilitate cultural landscape heritage practices in China. This research examined the Digital Scenic Area project as instrumental case studies to identify the main components for a HLIM. As the two major components of cultural landscape heritage, both the physical features and the non-physical landscapes experiences were identified in this paper. The large amount of intangible heritage aspects indicated the significant differences between a HLIM and a BIM. Accordingly, a conceptual framework to represent ‘cultural experiences’ was identified with certain categories of landscape features and attributes. In terms of technologies, firstly, this research revealed that virtual reality was the most prioritised tool used in the current landscape conservation practices in China. Secondly, the other required system includes landscape-monitoring tools and the automation office work. Lastly, a HLIM also needs to contain a special information platform for cultural and historical information. The components identified in this paper could potentially contribute to an integrated conceptual framework of HLIM in China. The conclusion identified several implications for technology development.

The application of digital technologies has greatly improved the efficiency of cultural heritage documentation and the diversity of heritage information. Yet the adequate incorporation of cultural, intangible, sensory or experimental elements of local heritage in the process of digital documentation, and the deepening of local community engagement, remain important issues in cultural heritage research. This paper examines the heritage landscape of tunpu people within the context of digital conservation efforts in China and the emergence of emotions studies as an evaluative tool. Using a range of data from the Ming-era village of Baojiatun in Guizhou Province, this paper tests an exploratory emotions-based approach and methodology, revealing shifting interpersonal relationships, experiential and praxiological engagement with the landscape, and emotional registers within tunpu culture and heritage management. The analysis articulates distinctive asset of emotional value at various scales and suggests that such approaches, applied within digital documentation contexts, can help researchers to identify multi-level heritage landscape values and their carriers. This methodology can provide more complete and dynamic inventories to guide digital survey and representation; and the emotions-based approach also supports the integration of disparate heritage aspects in a holistic understanding of the living landscape. Finally, the incorporation of community participation in the process of digital survey breaks down boundaries between experts and communities and leads to more culturally appropriate heritage records and representations.