In addition, the protected area system in Germany is complemented by the German-specific legal environmental planning instruments: landscape planning and the impact mitigation regulation (Marschall 2007). The goal of these instruments is to implement the objectives of nature conservation and landscape management and to provide the legal basis for sustainable landscape development (Bundesanstalt fu¨ r Naturschutz 2008). Landscape planning is a comprehensive spatial environmental planning instrument that provides a ‘‘broad base of spatial information about ecological and social landscape functions, as well as prioritised landscape development goals, including local residents’ preferences’’ (von Haaren and Bathke 2008 p 212). Landscape planning is carried out with blanket coverage at all levels and scales of spatial planning and zoning (for the state level in the scale of 1:200000–1:500000, for the region usually 1:50000 and for the municipality in 1:10000 or 1:5000; Wende et al. 2012) and provides for the acquisition and integration of the interests
of nature conservation and landscape management into spatial planning (von Haaren and Bathke 2008).