**2.2 Edges and boundaries**

234 Landscape Planning

them deal with the macro environment, landscape planning focuses on the resources and

Coined in the late 1930s and developed thanks to aerial photography, landscape ecology originally focused on the spatial patterns created by the environment and vegetation. Ecology studies the interactions of organisms with their environment, and a landscape is a mosaic with ecosystems and land uses. Landscape ecology focuses on heterogeneous land mosaics, where the distribution, movement and flow of living beings and materials could be easily observed and foreseen. The principles of landscape ecology, particularly taking the landscape as the unit of study, later gained prominence in landscape planning. Several authors, like McHarg (1969) and Steiner (1991), sought to bridge the gap between landscape ecology and planning and gave way to the development of ecological approaches of landscape planning. More recently, the concept 'ecological landscape planning' has gained prominence (Cook & Lier, 1994). Whereas it is commonplace in landscape planning to use administrative boundaries or watersheds (Cook & Lier, 1994), the methodology of ecological landscape planning is based on landscape ecology. In addition, landscape ecology is related to land evaluation. The focus of land evaluation has changed considerably since the 1960s, from classification and potentiality, to feasibility and lastly sustainable land use in the 1990s (Peng et al., 2006). As both concepts share a common emphasis on social, economic and ecological values, landscape ecology could be utilized in relation with sustainable land use

Ecological approaches of landscape planning constitute guidelines that shed light on various steps of planning processes such as data collection and analysis, participation and eventual monitoring (Langevelde, 1994). Ecological principles are functional in maintaining the integrity of landscape by increasing connectivity and minimizing fragmentation and land degradation. Below, four landscape ecological principles are presented: patches, edges and

Patches can have both positive and negative impacts on landscape. While forest patches between agricultural areas may prove beneficial for the ecological health, a landfill next to a sensitive wetland may have an adverse effect (Dramstad et al., 1996). Below, patches are

**Patch Size Patch Number Patch Location** 

Number of large patches Grouped patches as

Extinction Recolonization Patch selection for conservation

Habitat loss Metapopulation dynamics

habitat

boundaries, corridors and connectivity, and mosaics (Dramstad et al., 1996).

categorized according to size, number, and location (Table 1).

systems of landscape in the planning and management decisions.

evaluation (Peng et al., 2006; Turner, 1989).

**2.1 Patches** 

Extinction Habitat diversity Barrier to disturbance Large patch benefits Small patch benefits

Edge habitat and species Interior habitat and species Local extinction probability

Table 1. Categorized of patch

An edge is the outer section of a patch displaying different characteristics than the interior conditions of a patch, in terms of vertical and horizontal structure, width, and species composition and abundance. These differences constitute the edge effect and the edge acting as a transition zone between habitats presents opportunities for landscape planners to facilitate the achievement of an ecological goal. While the shapes of patches can be natural, i.e. due to their boundaries, they can as well be artificial, i.e. administrative, and thus, differ to a varying extent from natural edges (Dramstad et al., 1996). (Table 2).


Table 2. Edge, boundaries, and shapes of patches
