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- Info
Changing landscapes: An ecological perspective
| Author: |
Zonneveld, I.S.; Forman, R.T.T., eds |
| Date: |
1990 |
| Periodical: |
New York, NY: Springer-Verlag New York Inc. |
| Abstract: |
The concept of landscape ecology developed over the past few decades is gaining momentum in the scientific and planning-management worlds. Generated in Central Europe and becoming prosperous via application, it has recently spread to the New World. Its state of maturity was signaled by an invitation to IALE, the International Association of Landscape Ecology, to organize a symposium and plenary lecture at the 1986 International Congress of Ecology in Syracuse, USA. The idea for this volume exploring the ecology of actively changing landscapes emerged at that congress. The chapters, here arranged in four parts, represent a diverse array, though not as wide as the papers presented at ongoing landscape ecology meetings. Part I, "Evolving Approaches", provides an introduction to the field and a history of landscape ecology. It shows the roots in biology and geography, as well as portraying the recent surge of interest in developing both theory and its applications. The focus on people and topics within landscape ecology emphasizes the positive feedback operating in the early growth phase of a discipline. Part II, "Energy, Nutrient, and Species Fluxes in a Mosaic", delves directly into many of the functional processes and mechanisms of nature operating at a landscape scale. These range from wind- and water-transported energy and materials to the dispersal of plants and animals by means of animal locomotion. The studies show that landscape structure, especially the configuration of patches and corridors, exerts a major control on these flows and movements. Understanding of these fluxes is gained through creative experiments, spatially explicit measurement, hierarchical analysis, and simulation models. Part III, "Natural and Human Processes interacting to Cause Landscape Change", explores how natural processes and human activities interact to change the structure of landscapes over time. Linking several time scales with cyclic and non-cyclic natural events is especially revealing. The human dependence on, effect on, and productivity of spatially juxtaposed portions of the land are also critical. These models or case studies of relatively unplanned (at the landscape level) human-land patterns and processes provide sound bases for understanding and decision making. Part IV, "Planning and Management of Landscapes", illustrates how landscape change, still mediated by human-land interaction, is organized and directed by planning. While long- and short-term planning focus on somewhat different variables, both maintain spatial configuration of the landscape as the centerpiece. The results of planning and management approaches based on landscape ecology, despite contrasting premises, spatial models, and detailed procedures, show some striking similarities and generalizations. By focusing on general concepts and principles the field is applicable for ecological understanding of any landscape, from primeval forest to irrigated plain to suburbia. With this approach landscape ecology has attracted the interest of theoreticians, planners and managers. People have been drawn to it from a diversity of disciplines; no one should be surprised that the approaches to understanding the ecology of a landscape are highly diverse. Indeed this hybrid vigor provides power to the field. Moreover, when landscape ecologists from Europe recently came in contact with the people of the New World, an -infusion of intriguing ideas provided a stimulus to both. Thus was this book born. Gazing into the future is both hazardous and our responsibility. Where will or should landscape ecology be in the near future? We sense that a top priority is to develop and consolidate the core body of theory, principles, and concepts. Expansion into new areas will doubtless continue, though perhaps at a decreasing rate; the field cannot do everything nor should it be spread too thinly. Building the central body of theory avoids the pitfall of some interdisciplinary areas of thought that never really flourished as more than the overlap area of established disciplines. This core also provides the essential impetus for, as well as solidifies, landscape ecology applications. Society gradually ponders larger areas, such as the globe, and longer time frames, as in sustainability. We can no longer view a local ecosystem or land use in isolation from the horizontal and vertical configuration of the surrounding landscape mosaic. Similarly we can no longer view a region or the globe without focusing on the heterogeneous pattern of landscapes within it. Humans require resources, while nature provides resources, as well as constraints on their use. Flows and movements to a landscape both respond to, and create, spatial patterns on the land. Understanding the linkages between (a) humans, resources, and constraints, and (b) flows, patterns, and land is to understand the ecology of a landscape. Putting this landscape ecology to work is to act in the long-term interest.
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