A Theoretical Framework For A Science Of Landscape

Human intrusion is growing at an exponential rate modifying structure and functions of many ecosystems (loss or reduction of habitats for species, loss of biodiversity) and reducing the ecosystem services. Many modifications are not immediately visible creating an ecological debt dangerous for the entire planet (Tilman et al. 1994) and reducing the possibilities for new biological aggregations. Human activity that proceeds at an accelerated rhythm affects several of the environmental constraints that have regulated the biological adaptation) as well as the physical dynamic of the land crust. In particular human activity at difference of other biological processes occupies a system of meta-domains that ranges from the biological realm to the mind realm through a huge possibility to invent new tools that enlarge the sphere of "competencies" touching the functioning of individual organisms, their aggregations (population, communities) and supporting systems (ecosystems, landscape), until the bio-physical processes. Such tools are the result of human capacity to handle things but also to "create" by mental processes new "virtual" conditions that finally are translated in a material domain. The mind domain is largely used to create physical domain by a self-reinforcing closure. Ecology is a relatively young science that enters into the center of the storm of environmental modifications without the necessary tools to face new and unpredictable effects of the thermodynamic disturbance (manipulated by energy), autopoietic processes (sensu Maturana and Varela 1980) complex interactions. The aim of this article is to present new epistemological possibilities for a theory that fill the gap between the separate knowledge that to day reduce the capacity to adapt our life style to ecological processes. The ideas that will be presented are an attempt to create a more general framework in which landscape is considered per se sufficient to justify a separate science.