Strengthening landscape ecology's contribution to a sustainable environment

Abstract

The need to avert unacceptable and irreversible environmental change is one of the most urgent challenges facing society. Landscape ecology has the capacity to help address these challenges by providing spatially-explicit solutions to landscape sustainability problems. However, despite a large body of research, the real impact of landscape ecology on sustainable landscape management and planning is still limited. This essay identifies four key areas where landscape ecology can strengthen its contribution to achieving a sustainable environment. These are: recognising the growing complexity of landscape sustainability problems; adopting a formal problem-solving framework to landscape sustainability problems; helping to bridge the implementation gap between science and practice; and developing stronger links between landscape ecology and restoration ecology.