LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND COUNTRYSIDE PLANNING - VISION, THEORY AND PRACTICE

Landscape planners are beginning to recognise the need for a strategic response to countryside change, but lack an appropriate theoretical f ramework. Landscape ecology is proposed as a basis for planning at a v ariety of scales. A number of key concerns of landscape ecology are id entified, which help to explain the functioning of present and future ecosystems. These centre upon population dynamics, characteristics of habitat patches, movements between patches, visual cohesion and hydrol ogical structures. Despite the complex relationships between biophysic al and socio-economic systems, some broad principles are emerging whic h can be used to underpin landscape plans. Several implementational me chanisms are available which might help to convert these plans into re ality. A set of strategic landscape planning principles is proposed, a s a basis for further discussion.