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In complete agreement with the thoughts of Kuhn (1962) scientific research similarly to other human activities provides a service that is intimately associated with time, place, and culture. In other words, scientific research intercepts the needs of human society and tries to describe the related processes. In particular over the last few years the landscape paradigm has become more and more popular. But it seems to the author an impossible mission to describe and monitor all the changes that have occurred along the geographical land zones around the world. As elucidated by Robert MacArthur (1972) every place on our Planet has a specific ecology and if we exclude the organismic teleonomy of the biological components (virus, bacteria, plants, and animals) that react to general metabolic allometric rules (Brown et al. 2004 ecosystems and landscapes appear to be systems functioning under local constraints and surrounding stochasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape is an entity particularly connected with human beings and it could replace the human habitat concept in this respect. Habitat and landscape conceptually can be considered synonyms, but in reality landscape is related also to a geographical dimension while habitat pertains to the functioning component of a species disregarding its geographical context. Despite the way in which we will define landscape later, how human-related processes interact with a bio-physical landscape remains an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific thought as we know it today, is based upon the assumption of an objective, external world. This conviction is supported by a rationale that calls upon mechanical laws of causal efficacy and determinism. Fundamentally, the correspondence between the hypotheses and their predictions through experimental research build the empirical success of Science. Nature, however, does not conform to the conditions required by a classical thermodynamic theory in which a physical state irreversibly evolves from its most probable, uniform, inert and unchangeable macroscopical precursor. The reductionist approach applied to ecology has shown limitations within its own domains of excellence. The homeostatic balances directed by determinism are often accompanied by unforeseeable instabilities where the dissipation of energy becomes the source of new macroscopic structures (May 1974 1976 1986 Kauffman 1993 Prigogine and Stengers 1984. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mosaics have common properties that allow us to apply well-tested indexes to measure their spatial properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when a patch enters into contact with another patch? This condition is the rule and not the exception in a mosaic. The distinctive characteristic of a patch is in contact with other characteristics of the neighboring patches and it is possible that it receives a negative reaction (for instance a different pH of soil in the case of a patch of vegetation). On the other side the patch encounters a favorable condition and expands damaging the neighboring patch. For instance, a clone of bamboo spreading into grassland. This case is typical for invader plants. An intermediate reaction is also possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second chapter, I distinguished at least three possible approaches to understanding the landscape: the Individual-Based Perceptional Landscape (IBPL), the Individual-Based Cognitive Landscape (IBCL), and the Neutrality-Based Landscape (NBL). These three different perspectives generate processes and patterns that can be perceived moving around. If these perspectives are indicators of real processes and related patterns, we can expect to see some results in a higher-rank meta-domain. The idea that the landscape is a space in which relationships and interactions happen, or is the geography of every domain, is common to all three visions. In other words, the space is the container in which complexity happens continuously. This complexity embarrasses our science which is based more on separate parts than on relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mosaic appears everywhere and is considered to be an aggregation of basic heterogeneity, but, if we reduce or enlarge our vision, new patterns appear. Moving down, we expect to observe the appearance of heterogeneity. But what is the limit at which we establish that a system is simply heterogeneous? I consider this a poor question; heterogeneity appears and disappears according to the scale of observation. We can state that heterogeneity appears many times as we move across a changing scale, and the same happens for the mosaic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether viewing our planet from space or simply viewing the structure of soil we observe objects spatially arranged as mosaics. The mosaic seems to be the common pattern that we perceive, especially from an aerial view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape is a recently investigated domain of the real world. The number of studies with the landscape as a focal object has grown exponentially since the 1980s. Many definitions of the landscape and its theoretical and applied subdisciplines are present in the literature, often creating great confusion about its vocabulary and ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the first INTECOL Congress was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1974 with the theme, "Structure, Functions and Management of Ecosystems," subsequent Congresses have followed: 2nd INTECOL- Jerusalem (Israel) 1978, "The Future of Ecology"; 3rd INTECOL in Warsaw (Poland) was cancelled for political reasons; 4th INTECOL- Syracuse (U.S.A.) 1986, "Global Connections in Ecological Theory and Practice"; 5th INTECOL- Yokohama (Japan) 1990, "Development of Ecological Perspectives for the 21st Century"; 6th INTECOL- Manchester (U.K.) 1994, "Progress to Meet the Challenge of Environmental Change"; 7th INTECOLFlorence (Italy) 1998, "New Tasks for Ecologists after Rio 1992." At the beginning of the 21st Century, ecological issues have never been more important both at a global scale and at a national level. The International Congresses of Ecology provided important fora to learn more about these issues, to discuss recent advances in ecological science, and to highlight deficiencies in the knowledge, which we urgently need to address. After the VII Congress in Florence, Italy, 1998, the VIII Congress in Seoul, Korea, provided an important opportunity for ecologists to continue the advancement of the science of ecology, and to learn at first hand of the many pressing problems that need to be addressed. The motto of the congress was "Ecology in a Changing World." This paper was prepared to summarize the activities and to report the progress and achievements of the Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not known well when the concept of the "Baekdudaegani" was formed and defined. Other similar concepts could be construed as being used in some old literatures, considering the fact that Koreans have traditionally treated territory configuration very important. We can find one evident record (Lim 1999) in Goryeosaii, which shows that the terrestrial stratum from Baekdu Mountain was then recognized as a kind of "flowing" of national territory. In the Joseon period, Lee Ik(1681-1763) with a literary name of Seongho and Shin Gyeong-jun(1712-1781) with a literary name of Yeoam suggested more concrete conception of the "Baekdudaegan" in Baekdujeonggan and Sansugo and Sangyeongpyoiii, respectively. From the fact that many literatures about the Baekdudaegan have been published after the mid of Joseon period, we find out that people have been interested in national territory and tried to formulate a general system of mountain ranges of the Baekdudaegan since the 18th century. The Baekdudaegan means the contiguous line of terrestrial stratum from Baekdu Mountain to Jiri Mountain without crossing valleys or streams (Yang 2002). It is the central axis of the Korean peninsula, which is connected from Baekdu Mountain, as well as the backbone of mountain ranges. The Baekdudaegan is based on Koreans' traditional conception of geography, which highlights connected configuration of mountains as shown on the premise of ‘mountain ranges divide streams,' rather than typical geographical conception of a mountain range. In this regard, regional boundaries and characteristics of the districts on the Baekdudaegan are identical with the mountain ridge. The Baekdudaegan has affected dominantly the formation of common and different features of administrative, cultural and living style between regions. It exits in substance in terms of geography and no doubt in spirit of the Korean people as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscape change has been largely influenced by human activities, especially in recent days. Population growth and various development activities caused significant change in landcover. Furthermore, industrialization and urbanization have created man-made barriers such as roads and railroads, which fragment ecosystems, thereby threatening biological richness and diversity. Fragmentation is recognized as one of the major anthropogenic changes of landscape. Fragmentation is defined as progressive division of large, comparatively homogeneous tracts of forest into a heterogeneous mixture of much smaller patches (Reed et al. 1996a, b). Consequences of fragmentation include habitat loss for some plant and animal species, habitat creation for others, decreased connectivity of the remaining vegetation, decreased patch size, increased distance between patches, and an increase in edge at the expense of interior habitat (Reed et al. 1996a). Change of landscape structure including fragmentation began to draw attention in ecosystem management because it is recognized that the spatial arrangement of elements in a landcover mosaic controls the ecological process which operate within it (Haines-Young et al. 1996, Ruzicka et al. 1990, Forman 1990, Forman 1995). To achieve the management goals such as conservation of species or natural resources, accurate information characterizing landscape structure and its change is critical prerequisite. However, at the level of landscape, it is very time-consuming and labor-intensive survey that spatially explicit and temporal databases are developed and managed on the basis of traditional technology. The dramatic expansion of spatial and temporal scales at which many environmental problems must be considered has presented another difficult quantitative challenge (Turner et al. 1991). Fortunately, some recent achievements in the field of landscape ecology offer an opportunity on this problem. As one of these achievements, many investigators have been trying to quantify and evaluate the landscape using landscape indices with RS (Remote Sensing) and GIS (Geographic Information System) technology (Haines-Young and Chopping 1996). The major objectives of this study were to quantify forest fragmentation in the Han River Basin, which has been subject to urbanization and road construction during the past years, from 1983 to 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rivers and streams are one of the ecosystems that have been seriously altered by means of human activities, particularly by civil engineering works (e.g. Bravard et al. 1986, Brooks 1988, Décamps et al. 1988). A barrage constructed near river mouth seriously changes estuarine environments (Murakami 2002, Nakamura and Fujino 2002, Yamauchi 2002). Dam construction creates a new lake ecosystem in a river with resultant discontinuity of material transportation and wildlife populations such as migratory fishes (Vannote et al. 1980, Mori 1999). Stabilization of river flow and alteration of sediment transportation by dams affect not only on benthic animals but also on plant species, which depend on hydraulic characteristics and hydro-geomorphic processes in a river (Tanida and Takemon 1999, Jansson et al. 2000, Kamada et al. 2002). Flood frequency and intensity have been reduced by dam operation, and it causes woodland expansion on bars (Harris et al. 1987, Johnson 1994, Woo and Yoon 2002). Channelization changes ecological function due to degeneration of riffle-pool structure of original rivers (Brooks 1988, Nakamura et al. 1997, Nagasaka and Nakamura 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drastic changes have occurred in the Japanese landscape since the Second World War because of urban sprawl, the energy revolution in agricultural communities and modernization of agricultural production systems. In mountainous areas, the national park system has played a major role in protecting natural values. However, a survey of endangered species has revealed the increasing importance of the countryside and the urban fringes. Within urban areas in Kyoto, which is surrounded by mountains, a useful analysis and a planning tool is that of island biogeography, where green areas are considered to be islands in an ‘ocean' of built-up areas. We are facing a difficult task to maintain biodiversity in rural areas, where the diverse and cultural small ecosystems once associated with traditional land use have been destroyed. Themes of nature restoration in Japan have also changed as a result of the recognition of the biodiversity crisis. Development of adaptive management techniques will be needed both in urban and rural landscapes. Nature restoration in urban areas, where wetlands and forests once existed, is another important task for the ecologically sustainable city. Landscape ecological concepts relevant to landscape analysis, planning and implementations, based on several examples in Japan, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is experiencing rapid urbanization and industrial transition. The pace, depth, and magnitude of these changes, while bringing about benefits to local people, have exerted severe ecological stresses on both local human living conditions and regional life support ecosystem. Urban sustainability can only be assured with a human ecological understanding of the complex interactions among environmental, economic, political, and social/cultural factors and with careful planning and management grounded in ecological principles. Unlike biological communities, human society is a kind of artificial ecosystem dominated by human behavior, sustained by natural life support system, and vitalized by ecological process. It was named by Shijun Ma a Social-Economic-Natural Complex Ecosystem (Ma and Wang 1984). Its structure is expressed as an eco-complex between human being and its working and living settlement (including geographical, biological and artificial environs), its regional environment (including sources for material and energy, sinks for products and wastes, pools for buffering and maintaining) and its social networks (including culture, institution and technology) and economic networks (the primary, secondary and tertiary industries and infrastructural services). Its natural subsystem consists of the Chinese traditional five elements: metal (minerals), wood (living organism), water (source and sink), fire (energy), soil (nutrients and land). Its function includes production, consumption, supply, assimilation, recycling and buffering, which play a key role in sustaining the city's complicated human ecological relationships (Fig.1). In recent years, a campaign of Ecopolis development were spontaneously initiated in some Chinese cities and towns. Ecopolis is a kind of administrative unit having economically productive and ecologically efficient industry, systematically responsible and socially harmonious culture, and physically beautiful and functionally vivid landscape. It is aimed at improving its structural coupling, metabolism process and functional sustainability through cultivating an ecologically vivid landscape (ecoscape), totally functioning production (eco-industry) and systematically responsible culture (eco-culture, Fig.2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of landscape ecology (Forman and Gordon 1986) is the integrated understanding of nature by considering the structure, function and changes of ecosystem. Landscape mutually reacts to human activities and natural environment, so this idea must be undertaken in real world. Therefore, the accountability of landscape ecology has been realized and disseminated. Quite a few studies have been conducted from different directions and angles in Japan. Some of the latest researches are Kamada and Somiya (1995), showing a comparison with time and space of landscape structure due to the land use structure and its changes, Kamada and Nakagoshi (1996) demonstrating a spatial comparison of regional characteristics, and Sakamoto et al. (1995), indicating the procedure of forest area management planning from a point of land management view. Most of the researches have implemented one-dimensionally comparison among years or among regions of landscape structure. The entire topographic approach towards the river basin having several branch reaches has not been taken into consideration. Research proposal of the whole environmental conservation appropriate to the regional condition, has been implemented (Nakagoshi 2000) It indicates an expression stating that a unit where fauna and flora are existing in a certain expanded area, as well as a unit where life forms exist scattered but mutually and closely related to each other, or on the basis of water circulation, the minimum ecological unit is required to understand the integrated ecological functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core change of spatial development planning in 1993 was to introduce the quasi-agricultural zone by use zoning in order to ease the land use regulation (Choi 2001). Designation of quasi-agricultural zone considers development as well as reservation at the same time, but it enables to secure the use that the development is available at any time. For the past 10 years of rampant national land development, it may be attributable to the designation of quasi-agricultural zone that is ambiguous but completely exposed to "development". However, even more troublesome is that the consideration for environment in various spatial development plans was only for the "formality". Many experts claim that the environment has been destroyed and polluted due to the development without careful planning, but none of the developments has been undertaken without planning in advance. Even the poorest planning presents the plan with much of green area that harmonizes with the surrounding scenery on its plan. However, once developed, we only see the mountains cut open with the clogging of the downstream to show our living environment in worse condition imaginable. The planning report and the policy promotion show the details to reduce the damages to the natural environment caused by development, but the actual enforcement method has yet to be proposed (KRIHS 2001). While the sceneries have been destroyed and the natural environment is damaging from various developments, the environment plan (MOE 2001a) has been making efforts for "Preservation Plan" to protect the species that have the preservation value but under the danger of extinction. And, in order to clean the polluted water and air, it has been strengthen the standard of pertinent laws and expand various environment-based facilities. However, the environment plan does not consider the removal of mountains and disappearance of forests due to the development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culex tritaeniorhynchus Dyar and Anopheles sinensis Wiedemann are distributed widely in Korea and are vectors of JE and of both malaria and inland filariasis, respectively. These mosquitoes are particularly abundant in riceland agroecosystems, where they breed in irrigated rice fields and associated lowland areas. Anopheles sinensis and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus are the predominant bloodseeking mosquitoes in July and August, respectively (Shim et al. 1987, 1990, 1997) and, when present in large numbers, these species present a serious threat to human and animal health through annoyance and as vectors of disease. Because of the threat that An. sinensis and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus pose to human and animal health, there is a need to develop management programs that will serve to continually keep populations of these species at acceptably low levels. The development and implementation of such programs require a detailed study of the relationship between environmental factors, including natural enemies and various abiotic factors in ecosystems, and the ecology of these mosquitoes. Traditional mosquito control strategies in conventionally-farmed rice fields used mainly adulticides which include fogging, aerosol sprays and larval control from agro-pesticides in Korea (Ree et al. 1981, Shim et al. 1995a and b). Each of these methods involves the application of relatively large amounts of insecticides into the environment of the rice ecosystems. These methods also may deposit insecticidal residues in rice that can be taken inadvertently by consumers as well as farmers. Therefore, environmental concerns have stimulated other farming methods to reduce the use of insecticides for controlling pests in rice fields. One approach that has recently gained popularity is organic farming. In Korea, 0.08% of farmers cultivate several crops using organic farming, which utilizes organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers and which does not use pesticides (Paek 1992). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently net production of salt marsh plants in Eastern Asia, Northern and Eastern Europe and the Middle East has been measured by several authors (Kim 1975, Bjoerk and Graneli 1978, Min and Kim 1983, Oh and Ihm 1983, Allirand and Gosse 1995). These results were obtained from the peak live standing crop by harvest at regular intervals. Such a method had also been applied to estimation of net production in the plant communities along the Atlantic coastal marsh (Udell et al. 1969, Marshall 1970, Jørgenson 1994). The Phragmites communis (common reed) is considered as highly productive, and has a wide global distribution, often present in wet regions as vast homogeneous expanses of reed bads (Pearcy et al. 1974, Bjoerk and Graneli 1978, Allirand and Gosse 1995). P. communis community grows mostly in fresh but also in brackish and saline water (Ondok 1973, Min and Kim 1983, Oh and Ihm 1983, Ihm et al. 2001). They are broadly distributed in the western and southern coast in Korea (Kim et al. 1982, Oh and Ihm 1983, Ihm and Lee 1998). These reeds have been utilized to produce non-food commodities, such as paper pulp, roofing and building materials, and in waste-water treatment plants (Bjoerk and Graneli 1978, Graneli 1984, Bjorndahl 1985, Allirand and Gosse 1995). The stand development and biomass production of P. communis have been studied intensively in the field (Haslam 1969a, 1969b, 1970, Dykyjova et al. 1970, Kvet 1971, Linden 1980, Dykyjova and Pribil 1975, Fiala 1976, Ho 1979). Such characteristics as CO2 exchange and salt tolerance have been evaluated in the different locations (Purer 1942, Walker and Waygood 1968, Sieghardt 1973, Gloser 1977, Matoh et al. 1988, Cizkova and Bauer 1998, Lissner et al. 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]