Landscape Ecology For Sustainable Environment And Culture

Climate change and the pressures of escalating human demands on the environment have had increasing impacts on landscapes across the world. In this book, world-class scholars discuss current and pressing issues regarding the landscape, landscape ecology, social and economic development, and adaptive management. Topics include the interaction between landscapes and ecological processes, landscape modeling, the application of landscape ecology in understanding cultural landscapes, biodiversity, climate change, landscape services, landscape planning, and adaptive management to provide a comprehensive view that allows readers to form their own opinions. Professor Bojie Fu is an Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chair of scientific committee at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Professor K. Bruce Jones is the Executive Director for Earth and Ecosystem Sciences Division at Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA.

Landscape ecology is a widely influential approach to looking at ecological function at the scale of landscapes, and accepting that human beings powerfully affect landscape pattern and function. It goes beyond investigation of pristine environments to consider ecological questions that are raised by patterns of farming, forestry, towns, and cities.Placing Nature is a groundbreaking volume in the field of landscape ecology, the result of collaborative work among experts in ecology, philosophy, art, literature, geography, landscape architecture, and history. Contributors asked each other: What is our appropriate role in nature? How are assumptions of Western culture and ingrained traditions placed in a new context of ecological knowledge? In this book, they consider the goals and strategies needed to bring human-dominated landscapes into intentional relationships with nature, articulating widely varied approaches to the task.In the essays: novelist Jane Smiley, ecologist Eville Gorham, and historian Curt Meine each examine the urgent realities of fitting together ecological function and culture philosopher Marcia Eaton and landscape architect Joan Nassauer each suggest ways to use the culture of nature to bring ecological health into settled landscapes urban geographer Judith Martin and urban historian Sam Bass Warner, geographer and landscape architect Deborah Karasov, and ecologist William Romme each explore the dynamics of land development decisions for their landscape ecological effects artist Chris Faust's photographs juxtapose the crass and mundane details of land use with the poetic power of ecological pattern.Every possible future landscape is the embodiment of some human choice. Placing Nature provides important insight for those who make such choices -- ecologists, ecosystem managers, watershed managers, conservation biologists, land developers, designers, planners -- and for all who wish to promote the ecological health of their communities.

Cultural landscapes are a product of the interactions between humans and natural settings. They are landscapes and seascapes that are shaped by human history and land use. Socioeconomic processes especially, but also environmental changes and natural disturbances, are some of the forces that make up landscape dynamics. To understand and manage such complex landscapes, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are necessary, emphasizing the integration of natural and social sciences and considering multiple landscape functions. The spatial patterns of Asian landscapes are strongly related to human activities and their impacts. Anthropogenic patterns and processes have created numerous traditional cultural landscapes throughout the region, and understanding them requires indigenous knowledge. Cultural landscape ecology from a uniquely Asian perspective is explored in this book, as are the management of landscapes and land-use policies. Human-dominated landscapes with long traditions, such as those described herein, provide useful information for all ecologists, not only in Asia, to better understand the human–environmental relationship and landscape sustainability.

The urgent need for a sustainable environment has resulted in the increased recognition of the field of landscape ecology amongst policy makers working in the area of nature conservation, restoration and territorial planning. Nonetheless, the question of what is precisely meant by the term landscape ecology'is still unresolved. No doubt, a proper foundation of the discipline must first be cemented. This book develops such a foundation. In doing so it provides all the diverse applications of the discipline with a solid framework and proposes an effective diagnostic methodology to investigate the ecological state and the pathologies of the landscape.

This major book explores commons, lands and rights of usage in common, traditional and customary practices, and the cultural nature of ‘landscapes’. Importantly, it addresses now critical matters of ‘cultural severance’ and largely unrecognized impacts on biodiversity and human societies, and implications for conservation, sustainability, and local economies. The book takes major case studies and perspectives from around the world, to address contemporary issues and challenges from historical and ecological perspectives. The book developed from major international conferences and collaborations over around fifteen years, culminating ‘The End of Tradition?’ in Sheffield, UK, 2010. The chapters are from individuals who are both academic researchers and practitioners. These ideas are now influencing bodies like the EU, UNESCO, and FAO, with recognition by major organisations and stakeholders, of the critical state of the environment consequent on cultural severance.

This book has been initiated by the workshop on Cultural heritage in changing landscapes, held during the IALE (International Association for Landscape Ecology) European Conference that started in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 200 1 and continued across the Baltic to Tartu, Estonia, in JUly. The papers presented at the workshop have been supported by invited contributions that address a wider range of the cultural heritage management issues and research interfaces required to study cultural landscapes. The book focuses on landscape interfaces. Both the ones we find out there in the landscape and the ones we face while doing research. We hope that this book helps if not to make use of these interfaces, then at least to map them and bridge some of the gaps between them. The editors wish to thank those people helping us to assemble this collection. First of all our gratitude goes to the authors who contributed to the book. We would like to thank Marc Antrop, Mats Widgren, Roland Gustavsson, Marion Pots chin, Barbel Tress, Tiina Peil, Helen Soovali and Anu Printsmann for their quick and helpful advice, opinions and comments during the different stages of editing. Helen Soovali and Anu Printsmann together with Piret Pungas - thank you for technical help.

This unique book addresses the issue of sustainability from the point of view of landscape architecture, dealing with professional practices of planners, designers and landscape managers. This second edition contains updated and new material reflecting developments during the last five years and comprehensively addresses the relationship between landscape architecture and sustainability. Much in the text is underpinned by landscape ecology, in contrast to the idea of landscape as only appealing to the eye or aspiring cerebrally to be fine art. Landscape and Sustainability establishes that the sustainability agenda needs a new mindset among professionals: the driving question must always be ‘is it sustainable?’ Developing theory into practice, from the global to the local scale and from issues of policy and planning through to detailed design and implementation and on to long-term maintenance and management, the contributors raise and re-examine a complex array of research, policy and professional issues and agendas to contribute to the necessary ongoing debate about the future of both landscape and sustainability.

The conservation and management of cultural landscapes, interpreted as the result of the interrelationships among economic, social and environmental factors through time and space, emerges as essential components in the definition and application of a modern approach to sustainable development. Cultural landscapes are the result of management practices and knowledge accumulated in human history and contribute not only to the cultural heritage of the world, but also to biodiversity and aesthetic beauty, providing also multiple goods and services for the development of rural areas. However, landscapes are severely endangered not only by some effects of the socioeconomic development, but also by inappropriate policies in agriculture, forestry and nature conservation. This interdisciplinary book presents a range of different methods developed to analyse, restore and manage cultural landscapes, reporting a number of case studies from Europe and north America, but raising some questions about the need for a revision of some past orientations.