Landscape Ecology - Ecological Systems - page 182

Evolving Concepts of Landscape Ecology
The definitions of landscape ecology are also diverse, although they are not quite as
numerous as those of landscape ( Table 11.1 ). Images can be powerfully inspiring,
and this is especially true to someone who has a special interest in landscape
patterns. Partly inspired by the conspicuous spatial patterns revealed in aerial
photographs, the German geographer and botanist Carl Troll [ 19 ] coined the term
“landscape ecology” and defined it later as “the study of the main complex causal
relationships between the life communities and their environment in a given section
of a landscape” [ 20 , 21 ]. Carl Troll's training and research in multiple disciplines
endowed him with the abilities to synthesize across, and innovate at the interface
between, different fields. He was trained as a botanist; did his doctoral dissertation
in plant physiology; and then spent decades working on the climatic, geologic,
geographical, and ecological aspects of various landscapes in Europe, South Amer-
ica, and Africa. It is not difficult to understand why Troll could simultaneously
appreciate the then-new idea of “ecosystem” put forward by Arthur Tansley [ 28 ], as
well as the great potential for geospatial analysis presented by aerophotography. As
a result of his attempt to integrate the “vertical” ecological approach with the
“horizontal” geographical approach, a new field of study was born.
In the past several decades, landscape ecology has acquired a number of
definitions which all are, in some way, related to Carl Troll's original definition.
For example, Zonneveld [ 22 ] defined landscape ecology as “an aspect of geographical
study which considers the landscape as a holistic entity, made up of different elements,
all influencing each other.” He advocated that the landscape should be studied as the
“total character of a region,” not “in terms of the separate aspects of its component
elements” [ 22 , 29 ]. This holistic landscape perspective continues and culminates in the
work by Naveh [ 30 ], who described landscape ecology as the study of “the total spatial
and functional entity of natural and cultural living space.”
Some key ideas of contemporary landscape ecology, such as patch dynamics
[ 31 - 33 ] and the patch-corridor-matrix model [ 11 , 12 ], began to emerge in
North America in the late 1970s, apparently with little connection to the European
root. The early ideas of landscape ecology in North America were inspired by the
theory of island biogeography [ 34 ], with an explicit focus on spatial heterogeneity.
The first major communication between North American and European landscape
ecologists occurred in 1981 when five American ecologists attended the first
International Congress on Landscape Ecology in the Netherlands. Two years later,
25 ecologists (23 Americans, 1 Canadian, and 1 French) gathered at Allerton
Park, Illinois of USA, to discuss the nature and future directions of landscape ecology.
The report of this historic work, published in the following year [ 24 ], became an
important guide to the incipient landscape ecologists in North America [ 35 ].
Why was such discussion necessary after landscape ecological research had been
practiced for more than 40 years in Europe? The answer seems clear from Forman
[ 36 ]: “What theory explains the spatial heterogeneity of energy, nutrients, water,
plants, and animals at the level of a landscape, the setting in which we live?