Advancing ecological function in managed ecosystems: An introduction

This presentation serves as an introduction to the symposium entitled: “Advancing Ecological Function in Managed Ecosystems: Restoring, Revealing, and Reinventing the Landscape”. 

In regard to intensively managed landscapes, the field of ecology has tended to focus primarily on quantifying the problems, instead of offering solutions – solutions that might require the development of a new design for the landscape. There are a number of reasons for this deficiency.  For one, most ecologists are trained in conventional ecology principles emphasizing the conservation of native ecosystems, where the primary solution is to limit the negative impacts of human activity.  Design of intensively-managed landscapes is not yet a significant part of that training.  Another reason ecologists have neglected landscape design solutions results from the site-specific nature of design projects which do not lend themselves to replication.  Viewing design projects as traditional experiments is fraught with problems of control, although recent examples suggest it is possible.  Finally, the scientific disciplines have historically ignored the value of landscape design approaches for exploring solutions to environmental problems, and the evidence is in the lack of landscape design articles in peer reviewed journals.  In the literature, the discussion of landscape design has been limited to theoretical approaches, with little attempt to include applications such as the implementation and assessment of specific design guidelines.  In this symposium we will explore methods to inform and assess landscape designs, ecological applications in the designed landscape, and the theoretical framework for the growing field of ecological landscape design.