ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to compare the disciplines of landscape ecology and landscape architecture in order to indicate the ways in which they can be mutually beneficial. Landscape ecology is a relatively young discipline in comparison with landscape architecture. Although the term was originally proposed in the 1930s, it was not until the 1980s that the first full major international meeting was held in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, in 1981, although the Slovak Academy of Sciences had previously organised international landscape ecology meetings on a three-year cycle. In these early meetings, discussions were mainly concerned with theoretical concepts and descriptive work. Landscape ecology has now developed into a distinct discipline with a strong science base involving hypotheses and concepts that can be tested in the field and to which statistical procedures can be applied. Underlying the science is an overriding desire to express landscape in a holistic way and to apply ecological concepts at the landscape level. Here is where landscape ecology differs from mainstream ecology, which largely studies aspects which are not concerned with interactions at the landscape level or scale. In particular, many detailed process and modelling studies do not involve the recognition of the complexity of landscapes and indeed, in many cases, specifically avoid such issues. In addition, many mainstream ecological research study sites are selected in isolation from the matrix of patches which comprise the surrounding area.
