Introduction

Geographical concepts of landscape represent an attempt to define the elusive object of geographical study in an integrated yet more focused way than by including all and every aspect of the Earth’s surface. Landscapes conceived as complex, spatial systems differ from other ‘systems’ approaches that have been proposed for physical geography and for Geography as a whole in which the spatial element was often missing. Progress in landscape ecology relates closely to modern physical geography and does have conceptual links with the human geographical landscape interests of ‘cultural ecology’, defined as the study of environmental influences on culture and the impact of people on the ecosystem. The new approaches to cultural geography that began to emerge in the 1980s were less interested in the material expressions of culture in the landscape than with the social processes that produced them and the meanings and values with which landscape was imbued.