Landscape services as a bridge between landscape ecology and sustainable development

• Published in: Landscape ecology Vol. 24; no. 8; pp. 1037 - 1052
• Main Authors: Termorshuizen, Jolande W, Opdam, Paul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Dordrecht : Springer Netherlands 01.10.2009; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: biodiversity; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Collaboration; Collaborative spatial planning; conservation; Decision making; Ecological research; Ecology; ecosystem services; Environmental Management; Environmental policy; indicators; Interdisciplinary research; Landscape change; Landscape Ecology; Landscape functions; Landscape value and valuation; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Life Sciences; management; multifunctional landscapes; Nature Conservation; Pattern-process relations; Perspectives; pest-control; science; Structure-function-value chain; sustainability science; Sustainable Development; Transdisciplinary research; valuation; valuing ecosystem services; Structure–function–value chain; Sustainability science; Landscape change; Collaborative spatial planning; Transdisciplinary research; Landscape value and valuation; Landscape functions; Pattern–process relations; Ecosystem services; Interdisciplinary research
• ISSN: 0921-2973; 1572-9761
• DOI: 10.1007/s10980-008-9314-8

Landscape ecology is in a position to become the scientific basis for sustainable landscape development. When spatial planning policy is decentralised, local actors need to collaborate to decide on the changes that have to be made in the landscape to better accommodate their perceptions of value. This paper addresses two prerequisites that landscape ecological science has to meet for it to be effective in producing appropriate knowledge for such bottom-up landscape-development processes--it must include a valuation component, and it must be suitable for use in collaborative decision-making on a local scale. We argue that landscape ecological research needs to focus more on these issues and propose the concept of landscape services as a unifying common ground where scientists from various disciplines are encouraged to cooperate in producing a common knowledge base that can be integrated into multifunctional, actor-led landscape development. We elaborate this concept into a knowledge framework, the structure-function-value chain, and expand the current pattern-process paradigm in landscape ecology with value in this way. Subsequently, we analyse how the framework could be applied and facilitate interdisciplinary research that is applicable in transdisciplinary landscape-development processes.