[en] Regional Geomorphology is defined as the scientific study of the spatial distribution of landforms at both regional and subregional scales, and has been traditionally considered by land use planners, as the discipline capable to explain the master lines that define the character of both territory and landscape. The use of landforms and land-units to delineate and define territorial units useful for land and resource management is a classical procedure used by both Land-Use and classic Spatial Planning. The design and use of either physiographic (synthetic) or parametric (analytical) landform-based methodologies to define homogeneous regions is a classic procedure, developed and used by sciences such as regional geography, landscape ecology and environmental geomorphology. Nevertheless, the former importance of the diverse existing regionalization criteria based upon physiographic and geomorphologic features, has recently suffered from a continuous decrease in both their technical and political popularity, being presently reduced almost exclusively to certain sectorial planning procedures. Amongst the territorial components and processes whose planning strategies have managed to retain the importance of landforms and land units specially outstand watersheds, Natural Protected Areas, natural and induced Hazards and Landscape. One of the main causes explaining the aforementioned decrease might probably lye upon the recent trend that is redirecting Spatial Planning towards a more complex socio-environmental, and each time less land-use-based, discipline. Even if Land-Use Planning still constitutes a very central component of complex modern Spatial Planning, it is no longer considered as its main core. Instead, issues such as the creation of places, public participation and governance-related strategies, and the capacity to link together the diverse actors, policies, scales and interests involved on sectorial planning in order to attain a sustainable development, have arisen as the main goals to achieve. In order to adapt to such new tendencies, land-use planning has evolved based upon the newest socio-environmental paradigms, assuming therefore the importance of concepts such as complexity and uncertainty. Even if these changes have taken place mostly from within a theoretical perspective, certain traditional sciences, such as landscape and spatial ecology, earth-system sciences, human and regional geography and applied sociology, have all been able to generate new models that are easily adaptable to the newest planning purposes. Clearly contrasting with the former, some more classic natural sciences, including Geomorphology, have shown a much stronger reticence to adapt to such changes, from both a theoretical and applied point of view. On the present article, the results of the methodology designed to provide Regional Geomorphology with both the epistemic foundations and practical tools necessary to become a complex science useful to the aforementioned newest tendencies in planning, are discussed. For such purpose certain indicators of complexity and uncertainty in landforms were designed, and discussed, using the theoretical basis provided by broader concepts such as fractal and complex geometries and fuzzy methodologies. The utility of such indicators and methodologies from within a planning perspective were positively essayed at the Bullaque river basin (Ciudad Real-Toledo), a region characterized by the high diversity and complexity of its landscape and territorial features and values. The results obtained also served to prove the miss-accuracy of the most traditional Regional Geomorphology–based planning methodologies. The possibility to obtain fuzzy indicators of landforms, made it possible, both epistemologically and from an applied perspective, to generate more flexible and less technocratic methodologies for planning in accordance with the present principles implied by the assumption of the socio-environmental paradigm.

[es] La Geomorfología Regional, definida como ciencia que se ocupa de describir y explicar la distribución espacial de las formas del terreno a escala regional y sub-regional, ha sido considerada por la planificación física y la ordenación del territorio más clásicas, como la única disciplina capaz de analizar las "líneas maestras" que definen el carácter complejo del territorio y del paisaje. La utilización del relieve como base física para la delimitación y definición de unidades territoriales integradas, básicas para gestionar el territorio y sus recursos, ha constituido además uno de los métodos tradicionalmente empleados por algunas de las disciplinas ambientales que en mayor medida han contribuido al acercamiento de la planificación física clásica hacia la nueva ordenación integral; es el caso de la Ecología del Paisaje, la Ecología Humana y la Geografía Ambiental. Paradójicamente, la importancia de los criterios fisiográficos y geomorfológicos de regionalización en planificación se ha ido reduciendo en la nueva "ordenación integral", quedando relegados a determinados procedimientos de planificación sectorial. Entre los sectores en los que la Geomorfología ha conseguido mantener su peso, destacan la gestión de recursos hídricos, de Espacios Naturales Protegidos, de riesgos naturales e inducidos y del paisaje. En este sentido, es a partir del reciente auge de una serie de teorías y modelos en planificación territorial asociados al paradigma socio-ambiental, entre los que sobresalen particularmente la complejidad e incertidumbre de los sistemas territoriales, cuando se ha generado una crítica generalizada hacia las ciencias naturales más clásicas que, como la Geomorfología, han sido incapaces de generar propuestas actualizadas. Por ello, la Geomorfología aplicada a la planificación ha sido genéricamente acusada de inmovilista cuando no, incluso, de determinista. En el presente artículo se analiza la eficacia y posibilidades de implementación de una metodología de análisis geomorfológico regional, con base en los principios de incertidumbre y complejidad de las formas del terreno, que fue ensayada con resultados positivos en la "región-plan" (la cuenca del río Bullaque; Ciudad Real-Toledo).