Reaffirming Social Landscape Analysis in Landscape Ecology: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Landscape ecology continues to mature as its theoretical grounding is strengthened, its precepts and principles become increasingly accepted in other disciplines, and its broad multidisciplinary perspective becomes adopted as a framework for a growing body of empirical work. The same may be said about a social landscape analysis that draws upon its theoretical foundations in applied demography, human ecology, and rural community studies. In this article, we highlight the theoretical parallels between concepts, principles, and theories in landscape ecology and those in demography. The objective is to expand the scope of landscape ecology by including a more coherent characterization of people, social organizational structure and social relations on the land. We believe an enhanced landscape framework that fully embraces social and demographic processes is essential for obtaining a truly comprehensive understanding of landscape patterns and processes.