Demands for landscape indicators are based on a need to quantify status and change, but also to identify driving forces, the impacts of changes and, importantly, to enable decision-makers to respond to development trends. These demands require the use of stringent scientific methods and analyses but also the conversion of information into a form useful to policy-makers. The Norwegian Monitoring Programme for Agricultural Landscapes ("3Q") aims to identify trends of landscape change and provide data to guide the development of agricultural and environmental policies. The sample-based programme reports indicators for a number of themes (biodiversity, cultural heritage, accessibility) but since aerial photography is the main data source, the indicators are principally related to aspects of landscape composition and structure. This paper describes how landscape indicator values from the first five-year inventory cycle of the programme have been combined with other data sources to identify possible driving forces of change, including the effects of policies. The paper illustrates the use of landscape regions for interpreting indicator values in a way that gives meaning in the assessment and development of agricultural policy. We conclude that landscape indicators may benefit from a regional approach based on landscape type rather than administrative boundaries, and we outline how regional indicators can be aggregated for international reporting.