I believe that we should try to help social-ecological landscapes (SELs, i.e. cultural landscapes) to develop into novel compositions and configurations that remain as valuable as possible for both people and nature. An adaptive approach in landscape planning still provides a fundamental framework for the implementation and adaptation of planning, management and polices over time as more information is collected. A crucial issue then could be developing landscape planning (e.g., restoration) that might accommodate for surprises (Scheffer et al., 2001) as humans will change land use, and especially land management, to adjust to climate change. In this respect, new conceptual frameworks for the design of SEL sustainability are emerging to establish how an apparent “ordered” landscape condition, provided by the cross-scale intersections of land-uses, plans and norms can be made sustainable in face of unpredictable disturbance and change. Managing a transition toward more environmentally efficient and, thus, more sustainable land use implies better information on repercussions of land-use decisions at local to global scale, the creation of proper incentives for agents and a greater capacity to adopt new land use patterns and practices. This can imply the strategic placement of managed and natural ecosystems in SELs to reduce stress intensity, so the services of natural ecosystems (e.g., commodities, water availability, pollination, reduced land erosion, soil formation but also cultural services) can be maintained and even enhanced (Jones et al., 2012; Zurlini et al. 2012). Land separation and land sharing are examples of such strategies (Benayas and Bullock 2012). The first involves restoring or creating non-farmland habitat in agricultural landscapes through, for example, woodland, natural grassland, wetland, and meadow on arable land (Benayas and Bullock 2012), or riparian habitats (Jones et al. 2010) to benefit wildlife and specific services. Land sharing involves the adoption of biodiversity-based agricultural practices, learning from traditional farming practices, transformation of conventional agriculture into organic agriculture and of ‘‘simple’’ crops and pastures into agro-forestry systems. A key aspect of adaptive planning and management is to implement monitoring programs to evolve iteratively as new information emerges and research and managing questions change. This helps evaluate how environmental targets and ecosystem services respond to specific landscape pattern designs (Ahern, 1999; Jones et al., 2012; Zurlini et al. 2012), and whether or not certain landscape patterns at multiple scales result in synergies and trade-offs among different types of ecosystem services (Wu and Hobbs, 2002; Naidoo et al., 2008). However, one of the main challenge is to avoid to get stuck in a rigidity trap with a pathological cycle of resource degradation, followed by value rigidity of social- economical response aimed at reestablishing or maintaining productivity of the resource-degrading activity with subsequent further degradation and erosion of adaptive capacity of SELs. Thus we have to learn by doing but also from what we have already done.

Did you think of Ecosystems Services? There is a lot about this topic out there.

But, what is your broad area of interest or field of activity

The work of this project might provide good examples on how analyses of habitat parameters/Ecosystem services on the landscape scale can be developed and implemented together with stakeholders and policy makers: http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/

Thanks for all the kind responses! The question is about to integrate the landscape perspective to the public/private policies for the community development

I think one of the keys to integrate landscape ecology principles to planning is to effectively link the patterns (e.g. changes in land use) with processes (e.g. agricultural policies, social movements). We recently published an article where we linked the spatial patterns with the historical context of a RAMSAR site. (see link below). I hope you find this information useful.

Article Spatial and temporal assessment of fragmentation and connect...

I believe that we should try to help social-ecological landscapes (SELs, i.e. cultural landscapes) to develop into novel compositions and configurations that remain as valuable as possible for both people and nature. An adaptive approach in landscape planning still provides a fundamental framework for the implementation and adaptation of planning, management and polices over time as more information is collected. A crucial issue then could be developing landscape planning (e.g., restoration) that might accommodate for surprises (Scheffer et al., 2001) as humans will change land use, and especially land management, to adjust to climate change. In this respect, new conceptual frameworks for the design of SEL sustainability are emerging to establish how an apparent “ordered” landscape condition, provided by the cross-scale intersections of land-uses, plans and norms can be made sustainable in face of unpredictable disturbance and change. Managing a transition toward more environmentally efficient and, thus, more sustainable land use implies better information on repercussions of land-use decisions at local to global scale, the creation of proper incentives for agents and a greater capacity to adopt new land use patterns and practices. This can imply the strategic placement of managed and natural ecosystems in SELs to reduce stress intensity, so the services of natural ecosystems (e.g., commodities, water availability, pollination, reduced land erosion, soil formation but also cultural services) can be maintained and even enhanced (Jones et al., 2012; Zurlini et al. 2012). Land separation and land sharing are examples of such strategies (Benayas and Bullock 2012). The first involves restoring or creating non-farmland habitat in agricultural landscapes through, for example, woodland, natural grassland, wetland, and meadow on arable land (Benayas and Bullock 2012), or riparian habitats (Jones et al. 2010) to benefit wildlife and specific services. Land sharing involves the adoption of biodiversity-based agricultural practices, learning from traditional farming practices, transformation of conventional agriculture into organic agriculture and of ‘‘simple’’ crops and pastures into agro-forestry systems. A key aspect of adaptive planning and management is to implement monitoring programs to evolve iteratively as new information emerges and research and managing questions change. This helps evaluate how environmental targets and ecosystem services respond to specific landscape pattern designs (Ahern, 1999; Jones et al., 2012; Zurlini et al. 2012), and whether or not certain landscape patterns at multiple scales result in synergies and trade-offs among different types of ecosystem services (Wu and Hobbs, 2002; Naidoo et al., 2008). However, one of the main challenge is to avoid to get stuck in a rigidity trap with a pathological cycle of resource degradation, followed by value rigidity of social- economical response aimed at reestablishing or maintaining productivity of the resource-degrading activity with subsequent further degradation and erosion of adaptive capacity of SELs. Thus we have to learn by doing but also from what we have already done.