Landscape ecology
Encyclopedia
As a highly interdisciplinary science in systems ecology
Systems ecology
Systems ecology is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, taking a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems. Systems ecology can be seen as an application of general systems theory to ecology. Central to the systems ecology approach is the idea that an ecosystem...
, landscape ecology integrates biophysical and analytical
Analytic induction
Analytic induction refers to a systematic examination of similarities between various social phenomena in order to develop concepts or ideas. Social scientists doing social research use analytic induction to search for those similarities in broad categories and then develop subcategories...
approaches with humanistic and holistic perspectives across the natural sciences and social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
. Landscapes are spatially heterogeneous geographic areas characterized by diverse interacting patches or ecosystems, ranging from relatively natural terrestrial and aquatic systems such as forests, grasslands and lakes to human-dominated environments including agricultural and urban settings. The most salient characteristics of landscape ecology are its emphasis on the relationship among pattern, process and scale and its focus on broad-scale ecological and environmental issues. These necessitate the coupling between biophysical and socioeconomic sciences. Key research topics in landscape ecology include ecological flows in landscape mosaics, land use and land cover change, scaling, relating landscape pattern analysis with ecological processes, and landscape conservation and sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
(Wu & Hobbs 2002).
Terminology
The term landscape ecology was coined by Carl TrollCarl Troll
Carl Troll , was a German geographer, brother of botanist Wilhelm Troll.From 1919 until 1922 Troll studied amongst other biology, chemistry, geology, geography and physics at the Universität in München. In 1921 he obtained his doctorate in botany and in 1925 his habilitation in geography...
, a German geographer, in 1939. He developed this terminology and many early concepts of landscape ecology as part of his early work, which consisted of applying aerial photograph interpretation to studies of interactions between environment and vegetation.
Explanation
Heterogeneity is the measure of how different parts of a landscape are from one another. Landscape ecology looks at how this spatial structure affects organism abundance at the landscape level, as well as the behavior and functioning of the landscape as a whole. This includes studying the influence of pattern, or the internal order of a landscape, on process, or the continuous operation of functions of organisms. Landscape ecology also includes geomorphology as applied to the design and architecture of landscapes. GeomorphologyGeomorphology
Geomorphology is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them...
is the study of how geological formations are responsible for the structure of a landscape.
Evolution of theory
One central landscape ecology theory originated from MacArthurRobert MacArthur
Robert Helmer MacArthur was an American ecologist who made a major impact on many areas of community and population ecology....
& Wilson's The Theory of Island Biogeography
The Theory of Island Biogeography
The Theory of Island Biogeography is a 1967 book by Edward O. Wilson and Robert MacArthur which laid the foundations for the study of island biogeography. An edition with a new preface by Edward O. Wilson was published in 2001 ....
. This work considered the biodiversity on islands as the result of competing forces of colonization from a mainland stock and stochastic
Stochastic
Stochastic refers to systems whose behaviour is intrinsically non-deterministic. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E...
extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
. The concepts of island biogeography
Island biogeography
Island biogeography is a field within biogeography that attempts to establish and explain the factors that affect the species richness of natural communities. The theory was developed to explain species richness of actual islands...
were generalized from physical islands to abstract patches of habitat
Habitat (ecology)
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...
by Levins' metapopulation
Metapopulation
A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level. The term metapopulation was coined by Richard Levins in 1970 to describe a model of population dynamics of insect pests in agricultural fields, but the idea has been most...
model (which can be applied e.g. to forest islands in the agricultural landscape). This generalization spurred the growth of landscape ecology by providing conservation biologists
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
a new tool to assess how habitat fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation as the name implies, describes the emergence of discontinuities in an organism's preferred environment , causing population fragmentation...
affects population viability. Recent growth of landscape ecology owes much to the development of geographic information system
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
s (GIS) and the availability of large-extent habitat data (e.g. remotely sensed
Remote sensing
Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon, without making physical contact with the object. In modern usage, the term generally refers to the use of aerial sensor technologies to detect and classify objects on Earth by means of propagated signals Remote sensing...
datasets).
Development as a discipline
Landscape ecology developed in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
from historical planning on human-dominated landscapes. Concepts from general ecology theory were integrated in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. While general ecology theory and its sub-disciplines focused on the study of more homogenous, discrete community units organized in a hierarchical structure (typically as ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s, population
Population
A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...
s, species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
, and communities), landscape ecology built upon heterogeneity in space and time. It frequently included human-caused landscape changes in theory and application of concepts.
By 1980, landscape ecology was a discrete, established, discipline. It was marked by the organization of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE) in 1982. Landmark book publications defined the scope and goals of the discipline, including Naveh and Lieberman and Forman and Godron. Forman wrote that although study of “the ecology of spatial configuration at the human scale” was barely a decade old, there was strong potential for theory development and application of the conceptual framework. Today, theory and application of landscape ecology continues to develop through a need for innovative applications in a changing landscape and environment. Landscape ecology relies on advanced technologies such as remote sensing, GIS, and models
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
. There has been associated development of powerful quantitative methods to examine the interactions of patterns and processes. An example would be determining the amount of carbon
Carbon cycle
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth...
present in the soil
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
based on landform over a landscape, derived from GIS maps, vegetation
Vegetation
Vegetation is a general term for the plant life of a region; it refers to the ground cover provided by plants. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader...
types, and rainfall data for a region.
Relationship to ecological theory
Landscape ecology theory may be slightly outside of the “classical and preferred domain of scientific disciplines” because of the large, heterogeneous areas of study. However, general ecology theory is central to landscape ecology theory in many aspects. The main difference from traditional ecological studies, which frequently assume that systems are spatially homogenous, is the consideration of spatial patterns.Important terms in Landscape ecology
Landscape ecology not only created new terms, but also incorporated existing ecological terms in new ways. Many of the terms used in landscape ecology are as interconnected and interrelated as the discipline itself. Landscape can be defined as an area containing two or more ecosystemEcosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s in close proximity.
Scale and heterogeneity (incorporating composition, structure, and function)
A main concept in landscape ecology is scale. Scale represents the real world as translated onto a map, relating distance on a map image and the corresponding distance on earth. Scale is also the spatial or temporal measure of an object or a process, or amount of spatial resolution. Components of scale include composition, structure, and function, which are all important ecological concepts. Applied to landscape ecology, composition refers to the number of patch types (see below) represented on a landscape and their relative abundance. For example, the amount of forestForest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
or wetland
Wetland
A wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated with water either permanently or seasonally. Wetlands are categorised by their characteristic vegetation, which is adapted to these unique soil conditions....
, the length of forest edge, or the density of road
Road
A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...
s can be aspects of landscape composition. Structure is determined by the composition, the configuration, and the proportion of different patches across the landscape, while function refers to how each element in the landscape interacts based on its life cycle events. Pattern is the term for the contents and internal order of a heterogeneous area of land.
A landscape with structure and pattern implies that it has spatial heterogeneity, or the uneven distribution of objects across the landscape. Heterogeneity is a key element of landscape ecology that separates this discipline from other branches of ecology.
Patch and mosaic
Patch, a term fundamental to landscape ecology, is defined as a relatively homogeneous area that differs from its surroundings. Patches are the basic unit of the landscape that change and fluctuate, a process called patch dynamics. Patches have a definite shape and spatial configuration, and can be described compositionally by internal variables such as number of trees, number of tree species, height of trees, or other similar measurements.Matrix is the “background ecological system” of a landscape with a high degree of connectivity
Landscape connectivity
Landscape connectivity is "the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement among resource patches" It has two components:*Structural connectivity: the spatial structure of a landscape and can be described from map elements...
. Connectivity is the measure of how connected or spatially continuous a corridor, network, or matrix is. For example, a forested landscape (matrix) with fewer gaps in forest cover (open patches) will have higher connectivity. Corridors have important functions as strips of a particular type of landscape differing from adjacent land on both sides. A network is an interconnected system of corridors while mosaic describes the pattern of patches, corridors and matrix that form a landscape in its entirety.
Boundary and edge
Landscape patches have a boundary between them which can be defined or fuzzy. The zone composed of the edges of adjacent ecosystems is the boundary. Edge means the portion of an ecosystem near its perimeter, where influences of the adjacent patches can cause an environmental difference between the interior of the patch and its edge. This edge effect includes a distinctive species composition or abundance. For example, when a landscape is a mosaic of perceptibly different types, such as a forest adjacent to a grasslandGrassland
Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants . However, sedge and rush families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica...
, the edge is the location where the two types adjoin. In a continuous landscape, such as a forest giving way to open woodland, the exact edge location is fuzzy and is sometimes determined by a local gradient exceeding a threshold, such as the point where the tree cover falls below thirty-five percent.
Ecotones, ecoclines, and ecotopes
A type of boundary is the ecotone, or the transitional zone between two communities. Ecotones can arise naturally, such as a lakeshoreLakeshore
-Settlements:* Lakeshore, Ontario, Canada* Lakeshore, Quebec, Canada* Lakeshore, California **Lakeshore, Fresno County, California**Lakeshore, Placer County, California**Lakeshore, Shasta County, California* Lakeshore, New Orleans, Louisiana...
, or can be human-created, such as a cleared agricultural field from a forest. The ecotonal community retains characteristics of each bordering community and often contains species not found in the adjacent communities. Classic examples of ecotones include fencerows, forest to marshlands transitions, forest to grassland transitions, or land-water interfaces such as riparian zone
Riparian zone
A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by...
s in forests. Characteristics of ecotones include vegetational sharpness, physiognomic change, occurrence of a spatial community mosaic, many exotic species, ecotonal species, spatial mass effect, and species richness
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
higher or lower than either side of the ecotone.
An ecocline is another type of landscape boundary, but it is a gradual and continuous change in environmental conditions of an ecosystem or community. Ecoclines help explain the distribution and diversity of organisms within a landscape because certain organisms survive better under certain conditions, which change along the ecocline. They contain heterogeneous communities which are considered more environmentally stable than those of ecotones.
An ecotope is a spatial term representing the smallest ecologically-distinct unit in mapping and classification of landscapes. Relatively homogeneous, they are spatially-explicit landscape units used to stratify landscapes into ecologically distinct features. They are useful for the measurement and mapping of landscape structure, function, and change over time, and to examine the effects of disturbance and fragmentation.
Disturbance and fragmentation
Disturbance is an event that significantly alters the pattern of variation in the structure or function of a system. Fragmentation is the breaking up of a habitat, ecosystem, or land-use type into smaller parcels. Disturbance is generally considered a natural process. Fragmentation causes land transformation, an important process in landscapes as development occurs.An important consequence of repeated, random clearing (whether by natural disturbance or human activity) is that contiguous cover can break down into isolated patches. This happens when the area cleared exceed a critical level, which means that landscapes exhibit two phases: connected and disconnected.
Landscape ecology theory
Landscape ecology theory stresses the role of human impacts on landscape structures and functions. It also proposes ways for restoring degraded landscapes. Landscape ecology explicitly includes humans as entities that cause functional changes on the landscape. Landscape ecology theory includes the landscape stability principle, which emphasizes the importance of landscape structural heterogeneity in developing resistance to disturbances, recovery from disturbances, and promoting total system stability. This principle is a major contribution to general ecological theories which highlight the importance of relationships among the various components of the landscape. Integrity of landscape components helps maintain resistance to external threats, including development and land transformation by human activity. Analysis of land use change has included a strongly geographical approach which has led to the acceptance of the idea of multifunctional properties of landscapes. There are still calls for a more unified theory of landscape ecology due to differences in professional opinion among ecologists and its interdisciplinary approach (Bastian 2001).An important related theory is hierarchy theory, which refers to how systems of discrete functional elements operate when linked at two or more scales. For example, a forested landscape might be hierarchically composed of drainage basin
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
s, which in turn are composed of local ecosystems, which are in turn composed of individual trees and gaps. Recent theoretical developments in landscape ecology have emphasized the relationship between pattern and process, as well as the effect that changes in spatial scale has on the potential to extrapolate information across scales. Several studies suggest that the landscape has critical thresholds at which ecological processes will show dramatic changes, such as the complete transformation of a landscape by an invasive species
Invasive species
"Invasive species", or invasive exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions....
with small changes in temperatures which favors the invasive's habitat
Habitat (ecology)
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...
requirements.
Research directions
Developments in landscape ecology illustrate the important relationships between spatial patterns and ecological processes. These developments incorporate quantitative methods that link spatial patterns and ecological processes at broad spatial and temporal scales. This linkage of time, space, and environmental change can assist managers in applying plans to solve environmentalNatural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
problems. The increased attention in recent years on spatial dynamics has highlighted the need for new quantitative methods that can analyze patterns, determine the importance of spatially explicit processes, and develop reliable models. Multivariate analysis techniques are frequently used to examine landscape level vegetation patterns. Studies use statistical techniques, such as cluster analysis, canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), or detrended correspondence analysis
Detrended Correspondence Analysis
Detrended correspondence analysis is a multivariate statistical technique widely used by ecologists to find the main factors or gradients in large, species-rich but usually sparse data matrices that typify ecological community data. For example, Hill and Gauch analyse the data of a vegetation...
(DCA), for classifying vegetation. Gradient analysis
Gradient analysis
Gradient analysis is an empirical analytical method used in plant community ecology to relate the abundances of various species in a plant community to various environmental gradients by ordination or by weighted averaging...
is another way to determine the vegetation structure across a landscape or to help delineate critical wetland habitat for conservation or mitigation purposes (Choesin and Boerner 2002).
Climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
is another major component in structuring current research in landscape ecology. Ecotones, as a basic unit in landscape studies, may have significance for management under climate change scenarios, since change effects are likely to be seen at ecotones first because of the unstable nature of a fringe habitat. Research in northern regions has examined landscape ecological processes, such as the accumulation of snow, melting, freeze-thaw action, percolation, soil moisture variation, and temperature regimes through long-term measurements in Norway. The study analyzes gradients across space and time between ecosystems of the central high mountains to determine relationships between distribution patterns of animals in their environment. Looking at where animals live, and how vegetation shifts over time, may provide insight into changes in snow and ice over long periods of time across the landscape as a whole.
Other landscape-scale studies maintain that human impact is likely the main determinant of landscape pattern over much of the globe. Landscapes may become substitutes for biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
measures because plant and animal composition differs between samples taken from sites within different landscape categories. Taxa, or different species, can “leak” from one habitat into another, which has implications for landscape ecology. As human land use practices expand and continue to increase the proportion of edges in landscapes, the effects of this leakage across edges on assemblage integrity may become more significant in conservation. This is because taxa may be conserved across landscape levels, if not at local levels.
Relationship to other disciplines
Landscape ecology has been incorporated into a variety of ecological subdisciplines. For example, a recent development has been the more explicit consideration of spatial concepts and principles into the study of lakes, streams and wetlands in the field of landscape limnologyLandscape limnology
Landscape limnology is the spatially-explicit study of lakes, streams, and wetlands as they interact with the freshwater, terrestrial, and human landscapes to determine the effects of pattern on ecosystem processes across temporal and spatial scales...
. In addition, landscape ecology has important links to application-oriented disciplines such as agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and forestry
Forestry
Forestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...
. In agriculture, landscape ecology has introduced new options for the management of environmental threats brought about by the intensification of agricultural practices. Agriculture has always been a strong human impact on ecosystems. In forestry, from structuring stands for fuelwood and timber to ordering stands across landscapes to enhance aesthetics, consumer needs have affected conservation and use of forested landscapes. Landscape forestry provides methods, concepts, and analytic procedures for landscape forestry. Finally, landscape ecology has been cited as a contributor to the development of fisheries
Fishery
Generally, a fishery is an entity engaged in raising or harvesting fish which is determined by some authority to be a fishery. According to the FAO, a fishery is typically defined in terms of the "people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class of boats,...
biology as a distinct biological science discipline, and is frequently incorporated in study design for wetland delineation in hydrology
Hydrology
Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability...
.
See also
- BiogeographyBiogeographyBiogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...
- Conservation communitiesConservation communities-What is a conservation community?:A conservation community is a group of individuals and families living in a community who are committed to saving large parcels of land from ecological degradation...
- EcologyEcologyEcology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
- EcotopeEcotopeEcotopes are the smallest ecologically-distinct landscape features in a landscape mapping and classification system. As such, they represent relatively homogeneous, spatially-explicit landscape functional units that are useful for stratifying landscapes into ecologically distinct features for the...
- Historical ecologyHistorical ecologyHistorical ecology is a research program that focuses on the interaction between humans and the environments in which they live. Rather than concentrating on one specific event, historical ecology aims to study and understand this interaction across both time and space in order to gain a full...
- Integrated and Environmental Plant Management AssociationIntegrated and Environmental Plant Management AssociationThe Integrated and Environmental Plant Management Association is mainly an educational association, with an annual conference held in January in Kelowna, British Columbia as one of its main focuses...
- Landscape epidemiologyLandscape epidemiologyLandscape epidemiology draws some of its roots from the field of landscape ecology. Just as the discipline of landscape ecology is concerned with analyzing both pattern and process in ecosystems across time and space, landscape epidemiology can be used to analyze both risk patterns and...
- Landscape limnologyLandscape limnologyLandscape limnology is the spatially-explicit study of lakes, streams, and wetlands as they interact with the freshwater, terrestrial, and human landscapes to determine the effects of pattern on ecosystem processes across temporal and spatial scales...
- Landscape planningLandscape planningLandscape planning is a branch of landscape architecture. Urban park systems and greenway of the type planned by Frederick Law Olmsted are key examples of urban landscape planning. Landscape designers tend to work for clients who wish to commission construction work...
- Landscape connectivityLandscape connectivityLandscape connectivity is "the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement among resource patches" It has two components:*Structural connectivity: the spatial structure of a landscape and can be described from map elements...
- NaturescapingNaturescapingNaturescaping is a term that refers to a method of landscape design and landscaping that allows people and nature to coexist...
- Patch dynamicsPatch dynamicsPatch dynamics is a conceptual approach to ecosystem and habitat analysis that emphasizes dynamics of heterogeneity within a system ....
- Principles of Intelligent UrbanismPrinciples of Intelligent UrbanismPrinciples of Intelligent Urbanism is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns...
- Schéma directeur d'aménagement et de gestion des eauxSchéma directeur d'aménagement et de gestion des eauxIn France, the schéma directeur d'aménagement et de gestion des eaux aims to put into effect the principles of the law of 3 January 1992 on the level of the major hydrographic basins. In translation, its name is outline for the organization of the development and management of water...
- Total Human EcosystemTotal Human Ecosystem- History of the concept :Naveh and Lieberman and Naveh proposed the holistic, eco-centric concept of the Total Human Ecosystem in order to study the anthropocene ecology and improve land use planning and environmental management, within an integrated and interdisciplinary approach...
- Sustainable landscapingSustainable landscapingSustainable landscaping encompasses a variety of practices that have developed in response to environmental issues. These practices are used in every phase of landscaping, including design, construction, implementation and management of residential and commercial landscapes. Issues of...