Key concepts and research priorities for landscape sustainability

Abstract

A recurrent question in landscape ecology has been: What is at the cutting-edge of research and application? The most thought-provoking debates and contributions in landscape ecology have occurred when scientists have mixed things up by crossing boundaries through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary activities including discussions and collaborations. One of the main outcomes of these activities is the debate about which issues are critical to the evolution of landscape ecology’s epistemology and its future research and application agenda (e.g., Tress and Tress 2001; Tress et al. 2001; Wu and Hobbs 2002; Potschin and Haines-Young 2006; Wu 2006, 2008, 2010; Nassauer and Opdam 2008; Musacchio 2009, 2011). For example, the debate about key concepts and research priorities have played an important role in shaping its future research and application agenda, and this approach can be traced at least to the days of Allerton workshop (see Risser and Iverson 2013) when landscape ecology was new on the scientific horizons much like sustainability science today. More recently, articles about key concepts and research priorities have provided motivation for greater interdisciplinary integration in landscape ecology (Brandt 1998) and developed a top ten research agenda for the new millennium (Wu and Hobbs 2002). These efforts have created the dynamic, intellectual tension in landscape ecology that has come to characterize and differentiate it from other disciplines in the biophysical, social, and design sciences. This tension has major symbiotic benefits for what is perceived to be the intellectual core of the discipline as well as its intellectual margins—with the discipline’s core and margins constantly refreshed and reinvigorated by the debate among landscape ecologists. Landscape sustainability is an example of a key concept and research priority that will play an important role in helping to redefine the debate about relationships among landscapes, ecosystem services, and human well-being. As a focus of study, it has become more prominent as landscape ecologists included it more often as a key concept and research priority in landscape ecology (e.g., Wu and Hobbs 2002; Wu 2006, 2008, 2013a; Musacchio 2009, 2011). The years 2009 and 2010 stand out as important points of intellectual convergence because two special issues of this journal were published about landscape ecology and sustainability (e.g., Musacchio 2009; Pearson and McAlpine 2010). Building on this foundation, this special issue presents the diverse perspectives of scientists that represent the state-of-the-science in Europe, Pacific Rim, Africa, and North America. The authors’ perspectives provide important insights into L. R. Musacchio (&) Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota, 89 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA e-mail: musac003@umn.edu