Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
sustainability? These are some of the challenging questions that landscape
ecologists ought to address now and in the future. Spatial optimization of
landscape pattern for environmental purposes presents exciting research
opportunities and requires interdisciplinary approaches.
9. Landscape conservation and sustainability: Biodiversity, ecosystem functions,
and human activities, all take place in landscapes. Landscape fragmentation
profoundly alters ecological and socioeconomic processes. Thus, the impor-
tance of applying landscape ecological principles in biodiversity conservation
and sustainable development has been increasingly recognized. However,
specific landscape ecological guidelines for biodiversity conservation are
needed, and a comprehensive and operational definition of
landscape
sustainability is yet to be developed.
10. Data acquisition and accuracy assessment: Landscape ecological studies use
large-scale and multi-scale data. A suite of advanced technologies are readily
available, including various remote sensing techniques, GIS, GPS (global posi-
tioning systems), and spatial analysis and modeling approaches. However, eco-
logical understanding of species and ecosystems is essential in landscape
ecology, and this requires the collection of basic biological data of landscapes.
Also, to ensure the quality of landscape data, error analysis, uncertainty analysis,
and accuracy assessment have become a key issue in landscape ecological
research.
Future Directions
Landscape ecology is a highly interdisciplinary field of study which is
characterized, most conspicuously, by its spatial explicitness in dealing with eco-
logical problems in theory and practice. Emphasis on spatial heterogeneity begs
questions of the pattern-process relationships and scale. Studying spatial pattern
without relating it to ecological processes is superficial, and investigating ecologi-
cal processes without consideration of spatial pattern is incomplete. From this
perspective, landscape ecology is a science of heterogeneity and scale, providing
a new scientific paradigm for ecology and other related fields.
On the other hand, with increasing human dominance in the biosphere, emphasis
on broad spatial scales makes it inevitable to deal with humans and their activities.
As a consequence, humanistic and holistic perspectives have been and will continue
to be central in landscape ecological research. Thus, landscape ecology has become
increasingly relevant to sustainability research and practice [ 38 , 56 ]. First, land-
scape ecology provides a hierarchical and integrative ecological basis for dealing
with issues of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning from fine to broad scales.
Second, landscape ecology has already developed a number of holistic and human-
istic approaches to studying nature-society interactions. Third, landscape ecology
offers theory and methods for studying the effects of spatial configuration of
biophysical and socioeconomic component on the sustainability of a place. Fourth,
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