ABSTRACT
The concept of landscape is contested and has changed in response to intellectual fashion and social processes. But landscapes themselves are also changing, their forms adapting to natural and cultural process and constantly in flux. This chapter explores differing approaches to the concept and entity that is ‘landscape’, by interrogating notions of form, process and meaning. In Geography, one of the most influential ‘scientific’ views of landscape during the second half of the twentieth century came from Germany. Landscape form may be interpreted physically or culturally. Landscape ecology identifies landscape patterns and structures, both of which have a geographical dimension. The current mainstay of landscape ecology, the patch–corridor–matrix model, has had extraordinary success in explaining many features of species patterns and dynamics. Many natural and human-made networks are linear flow systems, which include corridor networks, tree networks and circuit networks.
