The concept of multifunctionality suggests that agriculture provides to society productive, ecological, and cultural functions. Public policies that promote a combination of different functions can improve multifunctional landscape performance. The objective of this paper is to present an evaluation method of multifunctional landscapes based on values systems of local stakeholders that can be used to support the development of public policies for rural development. This method used a geographic information system to identify the elements present in the study area located in the city of Joinville, Santa Catarina, between 2010 and 2012. From interviews with 53 people were assigned values for 15 descriptors representing the productive, ecological and cultural features of each element identified. These values were weighted considering the percentage of area occupied by each element and its form index. The weighted results showed the best multifunctional performance with the Water Resources opposed to Agroecosystems. The proposed method has advantages because it allows: a) quantifying the intuitive perceptions facilitating the interpretation of complex situations, b) assess rural landscapes at different scales, c) understand the performance of each function and the balance between the functions of the landscape. But, it also has weaknesses: a) is not objective, since it derives from viewpoints b) responses may get interference related to the attitude of the researcher c) the results have limited validity in time and space, d) commitment of respondents define the validity of the results.
rural development; landscape evaluation; public policies.
