Back from landscape science to landscape ecology?

Back from landscape science to landscape ecology? Miloslav Lapka1,3, Eva Cudlínová1,2, Jan Vávra1,3 1 Institute of Systems Biology and Ecology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i., Na Sádkách 7, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic 2 Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia, Studentská 13, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic 3 Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, Celetná 20, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic milala@usbe.cas.cz evacu@usbe.cas.cz vavra@usbe.cas.cz Introduction Landscape ecology presents itself as an interdisciplinary science, which links natural sciences with human disciplines and concerns human activity in landscape (www.landscape-ecology.org). Is it reality or just a proclamation? What shows analysis of leading journals? Methodology We reviewed 1620 abstracts of scientific articles published in two journals : Landscape Ecology (LE) and Landscape and Urban Planning (LUP) in years 1999-2008. This number means all articles from the decade available through Web of Science (LE) and Science Direct (LUP). Articles were divided into 3 groups according to the position of human (Social, Natural & Technical management and Natural). All abstracts were read, not just checked according to keywords, in Social group all full version of articles were reviewed. Results Social Fig. 1 LE summary (1999-2008) Landscape Ecology Fig. 2 LUP summary (1999-2008) NT management Landscape and Urban Planning NT mngmt 12% Social 5% • human system is an object of research Natural 33% • for human, but human system is not research object Social 37% Natural • human system is not an object of reserach NT mngmt 30% Natural 83% Fig. 3 LE per years Landscape ecology Landscape and Urban Planning 100% 100% 90% 90% 80% 80% 70% 70% 07 06 05 04 03 02 08 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 99 19 07 08 20 20 05 04 06 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 03 0% 02 0% 01 10% 00 20% 10% 99 30% 20% 00 40% 30% LE Natural NT mngmt Social 50% 01 40% 60% 20 Natural NT mngmt Social 50% 20 60% 19 Tab. 1 Articles in both journals Fig. 4 LUP per years LUP Social 37 337 NT mngmt 81 282 Natural 572 311 Total 690 930 Discussion and conclusion While some other studies and reviews are focused on more criterias, i.e. Wiens (1992), Hobbs (1997) and Andersen (2008), we focused mainly on social system in landscape as primary research object, which requires connection with social sciences. From this point of view we can note that LUP has evidently better proportional concern on social aspects of landscape than LE, even higher than Antrop’s study shows (2001). Landscape Ecology, the house journal of IALE, doesn’t meet its proclamated role to be bridge between nature and culture, between science and humanities. Analysis of our total sample of abstracts and articles shows Andersen’s (2008) conclusion about articles focusing on sociology in LE like overemphasized, maybe due to random sampling of 50 cases and classification of papers belonging to Social system following her very broad definition as „some aspect of sociology“. Results show that real cooperation with social sciences (Golley, 1996), integrating humans into landscape ecology (Wu and Hobbs, 2002) and concept of Total Human Ecosystem (Naveh, 2000) are more proclamations and wishes than a real way of thinking among the group of landscape ecologists presenting their papers in the elite house journal of IALE. It looks like reductionism towards landscape science bears fruit. Isn´t it the right time for return to landscape ecology? References Thank you for your attention Andersen B., J. (2008), Research in the journal Landscape Ecology, 1987-2005. Landscape Ecology 23: 129-134 Antrop, M. (2001), The language of landscape ecologists and planners. A comparative content analysis of concepts used in landscape ecology. Landscape and Urban Planning 55: 163-173 Golley, F., B. (1996), A state of transition. Landscape Ecology 11: 321-323 Hobbs, R. (1997), Future landscapes and future of landscape ecology. Landscape and Urban Planning 37: 1-9 Naveh, Z. (2000), What is holistic landscape ecology? A conceptual introduction. Landscape and Urban Planning 50: 7-26 Wiens, J., A. (1992), What is landscape ecology, really? Landscape Ecology 7: 149-150 Wu, J., Hobbs, R. (2002), Key issues and research priorities in landscape ecology: An idiosyncratic synthesis. Landscape Ecology 17: 355-365