Interdisciplinarity,landscape ecology and the `Transformation of Agricultural Landscapes'

The theme, the `Transformation of Agricultural Landscapes' is used as a context for examining the current status of landscape ecology and its ability to provide a critical set of responses to a defined range of environmental issues. The links between academic structures and the public demand for landscape-based information raises the potential for landscape ecology to provide solutions. Current approaches within landscape ecology are examined and the dominance of the interdisciplinary approach is found to be deficient. A solution is for the land(scape) system itself to become the initial focus of landscape research. A land system has its own systematic properties which extend beyond the biological dominance of ecosystem science which to many is the basis for landscape ecology. For knowledge of the landscape itself to emerge, landscape ecology must develop more as a discipline with its own theoretical bases and foci than as an interdisciplinary area.