University of Copenhagen

Landscape Ecology Christensen, Andreas Aagaard; Brandt, Jesper; Svenningsen, Stig Roar Published in: The International Encyclopedia of Geography DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg1168 Publication date: 2017 Document version Version created as part of publication process; publisher's layout; not normally made publicly available Citation for published version (APA): Christensen, A. A., Brandt, J., & Svenningsen, S. R. (2017). Landscape Ecology. In D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu, & R. A. Marston (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology (pp. 1-10). Wiley. Major Reference Works https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg1168 Download date: 08. apr.. 2020 k Richardson wbieg1168.tex V1 - 07/16/2016 4:44 P.M. Page 1 for Troll and his contemporaries to integrate Landscape ecology analytical perspectives from a range of otherwise discrete sciences in their analysis of landscape Andreas Aagaard Christensen processes. In this way, the development of Copenhagen University, Denmark landscape ecology, characterized by its specific focus on the ecological significance of spatial Jesper Brandt form and pattern, was closely associated both Roskilde University Denmark with the novel perspective provided by aerial Stig Roar Svenningsen photography and also with older geographical The Royal Library, Denmark perspectives of analysis inherited from classical cultural and physical geography. Troll had been trained in the traditions of The foundations of landscape ecology geography defined by Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter, the two great initiators of The term landscape ecology (in the original the field as a modern science in the middle of German Landschaftsökologie) was first used in the nineteenth century. From them and their 1939 by the German geographer Carl Troll immediate successors he had picked up a certain as the name for a particular way of looking breadth of scope and an interest in the intercon- upon the landscape (Anschauungsweise)based nected nature of geographic phenomena, which on a holistic perspective integrating geograph- he emphasized in his writings. He had studied k ical and ecological insights into the nature of the work of Humboldt and Ritter extensively k terrestrial environments (Troll 1939). Troll’s and had been impressed especially by their ability previous research into the coupled relationship to correlate natural and cultural phenomena. between vegetation, environment, and land use From Humboldt’s scholarship he had understood had brought him to conduct extensive fieldwork the need to abstain from disentangling research registrations of vegetation patterns in landscapes objects from their environment, but rather to in Northern Europe. These experiences, in turn, delve into the multifaceted empirical relation- had inspired him to take up aerial photography ships linking otherwise seemingly disparate as an instrument to identify and describe spatial elements with larger patterns of distribution and units of vegetation cover, the heterogeneous causality. For Troll and his contemporaries, it pattern of which he was then able to relate was never enough to understand the nature of analytically to both social and environmental a species or habitat type in its own right – the processes of change. On these foundations, Troll aim was to explain how species and habitats proposed a science of landscape processes that interact with each other and other facets of their would be based on the new technology of aerial environment, with reference to actual, empirical photograph interpretation, to classify the earth’s histories of change. surface into discrete land units. On the basis On this basis Troll was increasingly criti- of such inventory classifications, it was possible cal of the growing specialization of academic The International Encyclopedia of Geography. Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg1168 k k Richardson wbieg1168.tex V1 - 07/16/2016 4:44 P.M. Page 2 LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY geography in his day. Since the late nineteenth socioecological analysis developed by Ritter century the universalist approaches advocated by through his work on the relationship between Ritter and Humboldt had been superseded in land use, culture, and civilization (Troll 1960). mainstream scholarship by an outspoken (and These concepts and instruments came to in Troll’s view unwarranted) reductionist stance inspire the development of landscape ecology, towards the organization of scientific knowledge. as a counterbalance to the fragmentation or Researchers within geography had sought to disintegration of geographic–ecological thought establish biological, physical, and demographic in the twentieth century that motivated land- modes of analysis as distinct fields of research, scape ecologists to establish their field as an and within these fields it had become the norm explicitly integrative science. In the 1950s and to seek for the smallest possible and most basic 1960s, landscape ecology consisted of a synthesis units of analysis in order to be able to study of geography with soil science and ecology. each environmental subprocess individually, as From the late 1960s especially, island biogeog- if in a laboratory. Troll saw this development raphy increased in importance (MacArthur and as an understandable but tragic detour from Wilson 1967). Parallel to this, a corresponding, the unified perspectives of earlier geography, spatially-oriented vegetation science developed, and one that made it increasingly difficult to and among conservation-oriented zoologists a correctly observe and describe the cohesive, strong school of dispersal ecology and metapop- interdependent nature of geographic phenom- ulation theory developed (Gilpin and Hanski ena. Therefore, Troll sought to conserve and 1991). The methods and perspectives of these k reformulate a unified perspective on terrestrial fields were combined by applying them to k surface processes. Hence, landscape ecology from the same spatially defined land units at various the outset was conceived as an approach to envi- scales – from single landscape elements or land ronmental research that was to be unrestrained units to larger complexes of functionally and by disciplinary and methodological dogma. historically associated sets of elements, up to When, in 1959, Troll was asked to address the whole landscapes defined by heterogeneous geographers of the British Association for the patterns of landscape elements. Advancement of Science on the centenary of the Figure 1 illustrates the type of method death of Humboldt and Ritter, he made his views for spatial analysis that is typically used. on contemporary geography remarkably clear. In It allows researchers to organize the many his speech he located the inspiration for a range mono-disciplinary insights flowing into land- of seminal landscape ecological concepts and scape ecology into a common empirical instruments within the work of his two academic understanding of landscape dynamics, by refer- idols. These included: forms of spatial pattern encing all relevant explanatory understandings analysis, which Troll became inspired to apply to a common set of land units and the landscapes and further develop upon reading Humboldt’s they constitute. In this way it becomes possible pioneering work on ecological zones and associ- to examine the spatial distribution and overlap ated patterns of plant distribution; the method of of explanatory understandings spatially based regionalization developed by Ritter, which Troll on map analysis. As the field developed, this employed to classify heterogeneous areas (i.e., basic method of integrating different perspec- landscapes) into analytical units based on similar tives by way of a common spatial framework form, genesis or character; and types of early remained unchanged, even though the range 2 k k Richardson wbieg1168.tex V1 - 07/16/2016 4:44 P.M. Page 3 LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY B A B D C 0120.5 Kilometers Landscape patterns N Forest oundary b rural areased surfaceilt up areas w u Grasslands B Plo Open Land unit Figure 1 Landscape patterns analysis typically starts with a mosaic of vertical aerial imagery such as the sample shown here (left). Through imagery analysis supported by fieldwork observations, the remote sensed data are transformed into a classified map of internally homogeneous land cover units (center). Considered as a whole, the land cover units form a set of heterogeneous landscape patterns (right), each indicating a particular processual relationship between life forms on the earth surface (including humans) and their geoecological basis. The k sample shown here illustrates how rural land use is adapted to the geoecological conditions in an agricultural k landscape near Skive in Northern Jutland, Denmark. In the north there is an intensively used and closely settled agricultural landscape dominated by arable fields situated on well-drained loamy soils (A). A narrow erosion valley covered by grassland habitats intersects the arable land from the north, draining into a broad glacial valley of low-lying waterlogged soils covered by paddocks and remnants of moorland at the center of the area (B). South of the central valley there is a relatively complex pattern of agricultural land use, which is adapted spatially and functionally

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