Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Urban Landscape Ecology: Past, Present,
and Future
Jianguo Wu, Chunyang He, Ganlin Huang and Deyong Yu
Abstract Cities are home to more than half of the world population. Cities have
been the centers of economic and social developments, as well as sources of many
major environmental problems. Cities are created and maintained by the most
intense form of human-nature interactions. Cities are spatially extended, complex
adaptive systems—which we call landscapes. The future of humanity will
increasingly rely on cities, and the future of landscape ecology will inevitably be
more urban. To meet the grand challenge of our time—sustainability—cities must
be made sustainable and, to this end, landscape ecology has much to offer. In this
chapter, we discuss the intellectual roots and recent development of urban land-
scape ecology and propose a framework for helping move it forward. This
framework integrates perspectives and approaches from landscape ecology, urban
ecology, sustainability science, and resilience theory.
Keywords Urban landscape ecology
Urban ecology
Urbanization
Urban
ecosystem services
Urban sustainability
Research framework
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