During the past 20 years cultural landscapes have become an integral component of historic preservation both in the United States and abroad. The National Park Service has assumed a national leadership role in the field of cultural landscapes. As defined by the National Park Service, a cultural landscape is “a geographic area, including both cultural and natural resources . . . associated with an historic event, activity, or person or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values.”)/images/Historic-Landscapes/Melrose-Oak.jpg "Natchitoches, Louisiana.<br /><small>(Photo: Debbie Smith)</small>")
The stewardship of cultural landscapes provides the richness and complexity of the human story of our nation. Examples of cultural landscapes range from a small homestead to a formally designed estate, a country road to a scenic parkway, a school yard to an industrial complex, and a farmstead to a civil war battlefield.
NCPTT’s research priorities include documenting and preserving threatened cultural landscapes. The National Center encourages research and partnerships in the field of historic landscape preservation to improve the technologies available to practitioners as they undertake the complex tasks of documenting, preserving, and interpreting the historic landscapes significant to a wide variety of people and cultures.