Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Preamble: the world we are in
- 2 Complexity and complex systems
- 3 New science, new tools, new challenges
- 4 The complexity of ecology
- 5 The generation of complexity
- 6 Micro-interactions and macro-constraints
- 7 A sense of place
- 8 Created landscapes and our changing sense of place
- 9 Catchment form and function
- 10 Catchment loads: ecosystem impacts
- 11 Change detection, monitoring and prediction
- 12 Evidence, uncertainty and risk
- 13 Modified landscapes: biodiversity
- 14 Function in fragmented landscapes
- 15 Environmental flows
- 16 Evidence for global change
- 17 Values and beliefs
- 18 Managing environmental, social and economic systems
- 19 Linking multiple capitals in a changing world
- 20 Community, capacity, collaboration and innovation
- 21 A new environmental paradigm
- 22 Emergent problems and emerging solutions: developing an ‘ecolophysics’?
- 23 Avoiding collapse
- Index
13 - Modified landscapes: biodiversity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Preamble: the world we are in
- 2 Complexity and complex systems
- 3 New science, new tools, new challenges
- 4 The complexity of ecology
- 5 The generation of complexity
- 6 Micro-interactions and macro-constraints
- 7 A sense of place
- 8 Created landscapes and our changing sense of place
- 9 Catchment form and function
- 10 Catchment loads: ecosystem impacts
- 11 Change detection, monitoring and prediction
- 12 Evidence, uncertainty and risk
- 13 Modified landscapes: biodiversity
- 14 Function in fragmented landscapes
- 15 Environmental flows
- 16 Evidence for global change
- 17 Values and beliefs
- 18 Managing environmental, social and economic systems
- 19 Linking multiple capitals in a changing world
- 20 Community, capacity, collaboration and innovation
- 21 A new environmental paradigm
- 22 Emergent problems and emerging solutions: developing an ‘ecolophysics’?
- 23 Avoiding collapse
- Index
Summary
Anthropogenic change and biodiversity: landscape ecology in fragmented landscapes, biodiversity and function.
So far we have looked at the philosophical basis of our ecological knowledge, the problems that our new understanding of ecological and environmental complexity bring, and the state of knowledge with respect to landscape function and habitat fragmentation. Along the way we have discussed some of the environmental problems wrought by our modern global society and made particular reference to the importance of water. We live in a world of constant change, of complexity, uncertainty and risk, at least some of which is brought about by the emergence of events driven by hitherto unrecognised small-scale interactions. We suffer from the tyranny of the small writ large.
Now we must begin to turn to the question ‘so what can we do about all this’. The first step must be a discussion about the nature and functioning of the landscapes we have modified and created: what might be called the ‘rest of nature’, because most of the planet is now modified by human activity in one way or another. Our modern agricultural and urban landscapes have been constructed over long time periods, sometimes millennia. As we saw previously in the discussion of the English landscape, little by little the native vegetation and ecosystems have been modified, cleared and replaced by human tinkering; everything is indeed much older than we think.
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- Information
- Seeking Sustainability in an Age of Complexity , pp. 175 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007