Ten major premises for a holistic conception of multifunctional landscapes

Abstract

The object of this paper is to present 10 major premises serving as a holistic conception for research on multifunctional landscapes (MFLs). Such a theory should become an integral part of the conceptual foundation of transdisciplinary goal-oriented and mission-driven landscape research. Based on a dynamic systems view, emerging from the recent paradigm shifts and insights from findings on complexity and wholeness, MFLs should be conceived as tangible, mixed natural and cultural interacting systems. They are the concrete, self-transcendent and self-organizing Gestalt systems of our total human ecosystem. Ranging from the smallest mappable ecotope to the global ecosphere landscape, they should be studied, upscaled, managed and evaluated with a biperspectivable systems view. For this purpose MFLs have to be treated simultaneously as products of material, natural biogeophysical systems and as mental, cognitive noospheric systems. This can be achieved with the help of innovative transdisciplinary approaches and research methods, in close cooperation among landscape researchers from natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities and the arts, as well as the professionals involved in all phases of land use decision. By adopting such a transdisciplinary and integrative approach towards the landscape as a whole, landscape ecologists could take part in such joint studies and projects, not only as narrow specialists in their own field of expertise as ecologists or geographers. They could help bridge the gaps between all biological and human ecological aspects, related to land use. Thereby they could play a useful role in ensuring the future of healthy, attractive and stable MFLs as part of the creation of post-industrial symbiotic relations between human society and nature.