**4. Discussion**

#### **4.1 Landscape research universe**

The plotting and description concerning all the time frames examined would be longer than allowed for the space allotted to this book chapter. However three time periods from and the universe of research the educational program universe are of particular interest (**Figures 1–4**). For the decade from 1992 to 2002, the research universe had expanded to many more dimensions from 10 in as first reported by Burley and Burley to 16 with environmental science as the largest dimensions giving way to agriculture [25]. Yet by the decade from 1998 to 2008, agriculture gave way to a more amorphous environmental science dimension and a total of 17 dimensions within the universe. The trend for amorphous categories continued until the dominant dimension in 2006–2016 was an amorphous unlabeled dimension. This suggests that some of landscape research was clustered in undefined and uncategorized set, defying description. For some this may be refreshing and or others this may be disturbing. While the categories change and the size of them varies, the complexity remains


#### **Table 3.**

*Eigenvalue scores for the set of subjects studied at the 15 schools.*


*The American Landscape Architecture Research Universe and a Higher Education Ordination… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99119*


**Table 4.**

*Eigenvalue scores for the subjects in the first wo dimensions. Studied at the 15 schools.*

across the time frames. In any one time frame, much of the remaining research not placed in a dimension, representing the proportion of research not placed in an significant dimension is 35.84 percent (the sum of eignevalues in **Table 1** that are less than one and then divided by 38) of the research activity. This means that about 1/3rd of the research activity is not in a cluster and not categorized. There is a fair amount independent exploration.

Are **Figures 1–3**, what one expects to see? or desires to see? Some may call for a more unified focus and other may call for even more anarchy and diffusion in landscape research.

#### **4.2 Landscape education universe**

In comparison to **Figures 1**, **2**, and **3**, **Figure 4** presents a very different universe. Landscape architecture dominates with 54.9 percent of the subject material taught and in second place it the amorphous dark matter of electives which defy categorization. **Table 5** illustrates the average percent of academic categories taught at the five schools.

**Figure 2.** *A drawing of the landscape research universe from 1998 to 2008.*
