ABSTRACT
The development of landscape ecology has enabled us to recognise that spatial and temporal heterogeneity is an organising factor in ecological systems, although ecosystems are classically defined as localised, homogenus groupings such as a forest, a meadow, or a marsh. For Burel and Baudry (1), the landscape constitutes "a level of organisation of ecological systems above an ecosystem, which is essentially characterised by its heterogeneity and by its dynamics, and which is partly governed by human activity" (translated from the French). Landscape ecology can be understood in different ways. Scientists always give it a functional significance to the exclusion of an aesthetic dimension, which may be more relevant to non-scientists.
