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Urban landscapes face significant challenges, as they must transform towards sustainability while remaining resilient. Urban landscape transformation is a complex task for landscape designers. They must not only create new solutions for landscapes but also ensure that their proposals are capable to deliver and maintain key ecosystems services over time and especially after shocks. In practice, designers must increase their dialogue with scientists and engineers to include expertise on ecosystems functions and services. Through science-design feedback loops, designers can be challenged by scientists’ models and simulations and thus create informed designs. Lastly, stakeholders also catalyse key steps of such a process, in particular by providing local expertise as well as co-constructing and validating the informed designs. In this paper, we introduce a roadmap, centred on an intensive interdisciplinary dialogue – a science-design loop. We illustrate the relevance of this roadmap with the analysis of five case studies about flood management and blue-green infrastructures. We analyse them according to the main steps of our roadmap and with the support of key interviews with experienced practitioners. First, this analysis provides an overview of best practices and challenges in the current urban landscape design world. But above all, we show the relevance of the proposed roadmap to muster science and design in a balanced manner in urban transformations., Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling, 5, ISSN:2663-3027

Survey research is an essential method for understanding if and how landscape interventions provide socio-ecological benefits in residential areas. However, depopulating areas present challenges to methodological conventions for household surveys. We describe the innovative modified approach we used to survey a Detroit neighborhood with high residential vacancy and ongoing depopulation. We conducted household surveys (n = 164) to assess baseline health information, perceptions of neighborhood characteristics, and design preferences related to alternative green infrastructure interventions. Specifically, we describe the iterative decision-making process we used to determine our area frame, identify and contact households, and monitor survey response – a process that led us to a census-based approach. This entailed ongoing assessment of household vacancy in our study neighborhood, using secondary data from multiple sources, tracking household visits during survey administration, and soliciting ongoing input from survey administrators. The iterative process we developed may be informative to others conducting household surveys in depopulating neighborhoods.

We conducted a post-construction survey of neighborhood preferences for street scale urban greenspace designed as green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) on vacant residential lots in Detroit, a city where greenspace has potential to address structural inequities that characterize legacy cities and affect well-being. We investigated residents’ preferences related to their perceptions of microscale elements: immediately perceptible fine grain landscape characteristics of plants, landform, water, and structural materials. Our results suggest that microscale elements affect residents’ perceptions of care and safety, which are strongly related to preferences for landscape treatments on vacant lots near their homes. For each of two replicate pilot sites, we developed 15 alternative landscape treatments (including a control vacant lot). Across treatments, we varied microscale elements that could act as cues to care (CTC) or cues to safety (CTS). In a survey of all households within 250 m of the two sites, we measured residents’ perceptions of and preferences for alternative treatments. Among CTC, regular mowing was essential to preference, and low-growing shrubs and forbs with prominent flowers characterize the most preferred treatments. A CTS, bollards separating vacant lots from public access, were preferred for most treatments. Lots planted with many trees were preferred by a smaller percentage of residents, and their perceptions of care were less related to their preference. Overall, preferences are more well-explained by perceived care than by perceived safety. Furthermore, perceived care explains the effect of perceived safety on residents’ preferences for vacant lots near their homes.

Agroforestry has the potential to provide multiple products and services from agricultural land, including bioenergy feedstock and habitat for wild bees. Our goal is to assess how variation in alley crop composition, landscape configuration, and total agroforestry area affects wild bee habitat in Illinois. First, different agroforestry crops may provide different floral and nesting resources for bees. Second, policy and economic factors may affect the total area and configuration of land devoted to agroforestry within a landscape. Third, farmers’ operational preferences will affect area and configuration; they may be more willing to convert entire fields to agroforestry than to convert small patches within fields. We use the Lonsdorf model, a spatially explicit assessment of bee abundance, to model how wild bee habitat in hypothetical alternatives to an Illinois landscape is affected by alley crop composition (willow and row crops or willow and prairie), landscape configuration (alley cropping in subfield patches or in entire fields), and total alley crop area (12, 24, or 29% of the agricultural land). Our results indicate that the alley crop composition and area are important influences on the modeled nesting bee abundance index at the scale of both the landscape and the field. Although the configuration of agroforestry plantings significantly predicts bee abundance at the field scale, it is not an important factor when assessing bee abundance at the level of the landscape.

This commentary responds to “Cues to Care: future directions for ecological landscapes” (Hostetler 2020), which states that “research on cues to care has been sparse”. In a series of papers between 1988-1997, I introduced Cues to Care (CTC) and developed related theories about how CTC function to introduce and sustain environmentally beneficial landscape elements in human-dominated landscapes, and we recently published a systematic analytical review of CTC, which included 212 scholarly papers (excluding my own work). I write this commentary to address errors and apparent misunderstanding of CTC in Hostetler (2020), and to offer insight and direction for those seeking a deeper understanding of CTC.

Exurban residential land (one housing unit per 0.2-16.2 ha) is growing in importance as a human-dominated land use. Carbon storage in the soils and vegetation of exurban land is poorly known, as are the effects on C storage of choices made by developers and residents. We studied C storage in exurban yards in southeastern Michigan, USA, across a range of parcel sizes and different types of neighborhoods. We divided each residential parcel into ecological zones (EZ) characterized by vegetation, soil, and human behavior such as mowing, irrigation, and raking. We found a heterogeneous mixture of trees and shrubs, turfgrasses, mulched gardens, old-field vegetation, and impervious surfaces. The most extensive zone type was turfgrass with sparse woody vegetation (mean 26% of parcel area), followed by dense woody vegetation (mean 21% of parcel area). Areas of turfgrass with sparse woody vegetation had trees in larger size classes (> 50 cm dbh) than did areas of dense woody vegetation. Using aerial photointerpretation, we scaled up C storage to neighborhoods. Varying C storage by neighborhood type resulted from differences in impervious area (8-26% of parcel area) and area of dense woody vegetation (11-28%). Averaged and multiplied across areas in differing neighborhood types, exurban residential land contained 5240 ± 865 g C/m2 in vegetation, highly sensitive to large trees, and 13 800 ± 1290 g C/m2 in soils (based on a combined sampling and modeling approach). These contents are greater than for agricultural land in the region, but lower than for mature forest stands. Compared with mature forests, exurban land contained more shrubs and less downed woody debris and it had similar tree size-class distributions up to 40 cm dbh but far fewer trees in larger size classes. If the trees continue to grow, exurban residential land could sequester additional C for decades. Patterns and processes of C storage in exurban residential land were driven by land management practices that affect soil and vegetation, reflecting the choices of designers, developers, and residents. This study provides an example of human-mediated C storage in a coupled human-natural system.

This study contributes to understanding of social preferences, norms, and behaviors in residential landscapes that affect planning, design, and management of trees, which store carbon and contribute to mitigating climate change. We investigated southeast Michigan homeowner preferences for different styles of front yards and backyards that were more or less wooded, learning what landscape characteristics they preferred and how their preferences related to their own yard management behavior. We surveyed homeowners, who selected their most preferred front yard and backyard from a series of images and indicated what characteristics were important to their preferences. We developed a homeowner typology based on their stated preferences for more and less wooded front yards and backyards, distinguished each type by landscape characteristics that were most important to homeowners, and tested whether homeowners of each preference type managed their actual yards consistent with type. Our results show that homeowners are heterogeneous in their preferences, identifying different characteristics as important according to type, but that only mowing of their actual yard is consistent with type. We also found that both important characteristics and actual uses of homeowners’ yards varied between front yards and backyards. Both homeowner types and front yard/backyard differences suggest opportunities for planning and maintaining larger urban woodlands on residential lots.

Placing environmentally beneficial elements into human-dominated landscapes can be challenging if the resulting landscape appearance does not align with cultural values. To address this challenge, Nassauer introduced “cues to care” (CTC) as landscape elements for design, and, in three foundational papers, she developed theories to explicate mechanisms of their potential social and environmental effects. These underlying perceptual, cultural, and social mechanisms are immediate recognizability, communication of caring human intention or presence, and a consistency with local cultural traditions or social norms for landscape appearance. To identify trends and opportunities in CTC scholarship and implementation, we examine relationships among CTC and their mechanisms by reviewing literature citing any of the three foundational papers. We note: 1) what CTC were identified, and 2) which of the three underlying mechanisms were described. Our analysis shows that first, many more papers include CTC as landscape elements than examine their underlying mechanisms; second, CTC and their mechanisms are interpreted with different emphases across study topics that are loosely associated with disciplines; and finally, land use/landcover (LULC) contexts influence choices of CTC. These differences suggest that greater consideration of mechanisms of CTC in scholarship could enhance their effectiveness in design and management. We discuss the related potential for CTC to be used as boundary objects for communication among disciplines, practitioners, and stakeholders – specific to locales and applications. With this more critical perspective on their use, CTC could become more effective in providing cultural ecosystem services and protecting ecosystem services more broadly.

While landscape ecology is distinct from sustainability science, landscape ecologists have expressed their ambitions to help society advance sustainability of landscapes. In this context Wu (2013) coined the concept of landscape sustainability science. In August of 2017 we joined the 5th forum of landscape sustainability science in Beijing (see http://leml.asu.edu/chess/FLSS/05/index.html). To inspire landscape ecologists in developing research for a more sustainable future, we highlight some of the key points raised there. We emphasize challenges that have been identified in sustainability science that we consider particularly relevant for landscape sustainability. Then we describe how landscape ecology could enrich sustainability science. Finally, we propose five topics for landscape ecology research to advance landscape sustainability science.

We investigated whether exurban parcel size might be related to homeowners’ behaviors that could affect carbon balance in residential landscapes. Based on data drawn from in-depth interviews and field surveys in 26 southeast Michigan exurban households, we conclude that an approximately 1-acre (0.45 ha) size may be a critical threshold for certain behaviors, such as leaving a portion of an exurban parcel in forest or old field or retaining leaf litter on the property. Tree planting is a relevant behavior that may increase when parcels are larger than 0.5 acres (0.20 ha). Yard style of adjacent properties also appears to be related to homeowners’ landscape management behaviors: conventional turf-dominated yards prevail adjacent to parcels smaller than one-acre. We used our analysis of these data to develop an exurban homeowner typology to be employed in agent based models in which homeowners’ behaviors that may affect carbon balance are linked to parcel size.

Farmers’ decisions about adopting conservation practices are inherently dynamic, affected by changes in environmental, economic, and social conditions, including interactions with other farmers. Water quality models that are used to assess agricultural policy interventions, such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), lack the dynamic social component of farmer’s decisions. While agent-based models (ABM) can represent and explore these decision dynamics, ABMs have not been connected to water quality models that can measure environmental outcomes of farmer decisions. Connecting ABMs and SWAT could advance the development of targeted conservation policies. Toward this aim, we developed a typology of Corn Belt farmers based on farmer characteristics that could be employed in an ABM and be relevant to water quality outcomes. Because our typology was developed for use in an ABM and to link to an existing water quality model (SWAT), it had distinctive simplicity (to optimize utility of the ABM) and relevance to characteristics modeled by SWAT. To identify farmer characteristics, we reviewed the literature on conservation practices that could be represented in SWAT models and their adoption by Corn Belt farmers. We found that land tenure arrangements, farm size, source of income, and information networks were consistently identified as farmer characteristics that influence conservation practice decision-making, were simple and relevant. Employing these characteristics, we identified four types of farmers to populate an ABM that will be linked to SWAT: (1) “Traditional”: small operations relying primarily on on-farm income; (2) “Supplementary”: small operations relying primarily on off-farm income; (3) “Business-oriented”: medium to large operations relying primarily on on-farm income and well connected to information networks; (4) “Non-operator”: absentee and/or investor farmland owners with limited connection to local information networks. This typology represents the heterogeneity of Corn Belt farmers relevant to their adoption of conservation practices. It gives us the conceptual framework for an ABM that can be linked with SWAT to explore coupled social and biophysical processes within Corn Belt agroecosystems, focusing on alternative approaches to targeting conservation policy to effectively reduce sediment and nutrient runoff.

While scientific knowledge of urban landscapes is incomplete, it is adequate to inform design, planning, and management of metropolitan regions. Yet, landscape knowledge is seldom employed as fully as it could be, creating an action gap that slows down or prevents effective use of landscape science to improve metropolitan conditions for urban sustainability and livability. We characterize the nature of the action gap through highlighting the differences between governance, science and practice in China and the US. We suggest that amidst such differences, a common thread exists in the application of practice as a catalyst for closing the gap. We then make suggestions for changes in related systems of rewards, innovation, and communication to activate practice as a catalyst in deployment of landscape science. Practice is also suggested to assume differentiated roles (bridging vs. facilitating) under the different governance systems of China and the US.

Around the world, many urban districts and some entire cities are dominated by vacant and abandoned property. Former uses of these properties range from heavy industry to residential neighborhoods, and each bears many potential legacies of past uses, including: introduction of contaminants that may threaten the health of humans and other species, engineering of land and infrastructure that may undermine hydrological ecosystem services, and introduction of species including invasives. While the ecological functions that characterize vacant urban lands have been only partially investigated, the legacies associated with their past uses are known to affect ecosystem services. In addition, changed industries, weakened economies, arcane financial systems, population migration, and aging resident populations have left many people living in the midst of this vacancy, with clear implications for human health and safety. Since market demand is weak in highly vacant districts, social capital may be particularly important to protecting quality of life and ecosystem services. New design and planning approaches should be informed by urban ecological knowledge that is synthesized with social and cultural understanding of residents’ perceptions and values. Interest in urban agriculture, green infrastructure, and open space planning for vacant urban lands is burgeoning. However, without adequate knowledge of highly vacant districts as socio-ecological systems, design and planning may have unintended consequences for human health, water quality, adaptation to climate change, and a panoply of other ecosystem services. Research questions and design and planning applications require a transdisciplinary approach to address highly vacant urban districts with legitimacy and relevance.

This commentary considers three visualization studies that have implications for civic participation in design and planning of landscape change. Together, these studies suggest the inherent conflict posed by the verisimilitude of visualizations that are understood to be real or true. Their verisimilitude gives visualizations the capacity to engage stakeholders but also mislead or bias them, and this can promote or distort civic participation. I use the Principle of the Landscape as a Medium for Synthesis and the Principle of the Landscape as Method for Invention to discuss the implications of these studies for civic participation in landscape change, and for the use of visualization to advance landscape science and practice.

The relationship between brownfield landscape design and policy for remediation of contaminants is both an ethical issue and a creative opportunity for designers. Under widely varying policies across Europe and the United States (US), residual contamination, which remains even after required remediation, is pervasive on redeveloped sites. Landscape design that anticipates evolving scientific understanding of contaminant exposure risks and changing policy requirements can strengthen the resilience of brownfield designs. Specifically, the appearance of the landscape can influence exposures to residual contamination by cueing the behavior of humans and other organisms to avoid exposures. We discuss three problems to be considered in the design of appropriate cues: the problem of invisible environmental processes, the problem of false identity stemming from mistaken perceptions, and the problem of design as deceit. Then, we consider three iconic public parks designed in different policy settings: Gasworks Park, Duisburg Nord, and Crissy Field. These designs embody appropriate cues for affecting behavior on redeveloped brownfield sites. Drawing on lessons from these parks, we conclude that the design of brownfield redevelopments can employ landscape appearance as one tool to limit human and ecosystem exposures to residual contaminants.

Care of vacant properties in urban environments is of particular interest to planners and residents alike. We report on a photovoice project completed by community leaders, researchers, and residents in two Detroit neighborhoods experiencing longtime systemic disinvestment. Participants photographed and discussed examples of care in a series of three focus groups in each neighborhood. Analyses highlight how acts of landscape care and visible cues to care contribute to changes in physical and social environments, and explore various links to health. We suggest theoretical and practical applications of residents' perspectives on landscape care and identify implications for well-being and neighborhood stability.

“Landscape” refers both to a conceptual field that examines how humans affect geographic space and to real places, and the word has both analytical and experiential implications. Pairing the analytical and the experiential enables landscape to be a catalyst for synthesis in science and for insight in urban ecological design. Emphasizing that science is fundamental to ecological design, this essay broadly interprets urban ecological design to include intentional change of landscapes in cities, their megaregions, and resource hinterlands. The essay offers two laws and two related principles for employing landscape as a medium and a method for urban ecological design. The laws observe that landscapes integrate environmental processes and that landscapes are visible. Two related principles explain how these inherent characteristics can be used to effect sustain ability by using landscape as a medium for synthesis and in a method that invites creative invention.

Exurban residential settings are relevant for understanding how societal desires for open space impact landscapes and their ecosystem services. In a 2005 image-based web survey of 468 exurban homeowners in southeast Michigan, we investigated how exurban home-buying choices may be related to having open space nearby, and we measured homeowners’ relative preferences for seven different types of open spaces characterized by different ecosystem services. Our study confirms that nearby open space is important to exurban homeowners, but it suggests that homeowners are somewhat heterogeneous in their preferences for different types of open spaces. They generally prefer forests, lakes, and streams, but their preferences for wetlands, prairies, playgrounds, and golf courses vary somewhat with education, age, or having children. In addition, homeowners for whom open space was less important when they bought their home had somewhat different preferences. We discuss the implications for protecting ecosystem services in planning, design, and development.

Residential land-use expansion, an important component of urban sprawl, has a variety of drivers and environmental implications. The goal of this article is to address the timing, location, and mechanisms of different types of residential development. Using land-parcel data and aerial imagery taken between 1950 and 2000 for eight townships in southeastern Michigan, we sampled and classified polygons (854 in total) of four residential types. Socioeconomic characteristics were collected from US census data at the township level and assigned to sample polygons based on the township in which they fell. We then applied survival analysis to achieve the above goal. We found that (1) the development rates varied between residential types over time and (2) the evolution of these types can be explained by different factors. Differentiating such residential types and their associated time-variant patterns usefully sheds light on environmental effects of residential land-use expansions in exurban areas.

T ransformative approaches to agricultural research, policy, and practice could result in future agricultural landscapes that are very different from the present. The National Research Council (2010) report Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century recommends that incremental approaches to improving sustainability, which work within existing agricultural systems, be augmented by transformative approaches, which introduce and assess the possibilities for more dramatic change. Biofuels, environmental effects of agriculture, and farmer adoption of sustainable practices should be among the key considerations in transformative approaches to 21st century agriculture in the Corn Belt. BIOFUELS Biofuels have emerged as the leading non-nuclear alternative to fossil fuels (SEG 2007), and transformative approaches can provide information about the merits of different biofuels—corn ethanol compared with other feedstocks, including perennial grasses for cellulosic ethanol (Robertson et al. 2008; Jordan et al. 2007). Current agricultural and energy policy have provoked dramatic increases in corn and soybean production for biofuels (Sorenson and Daukas 2010; Lubowski et al. 2008). With effective future commercial scale technologies, perennial grass feedstock for cellulosic ethanol may outperform corn ethanol in terms of net energy production, terrestrial carbon storage, and other ecosystem services (Simpson et al. 2008; Fargione et al. 2008).

Over the past 25 years Landscape Journal has made significant contributions to the scholarly base of knowledge needed for building the discipline of landscape architecture. The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), which owns Landscape Journal, recently identified five strategic goals for the journal: enhance subject- matter diversity, nurture scholarship in landscape architecture, increase readership and impact, reach out to diverse new contributors, and strengthen the connection to practice. Examination of its past performance relative to these goals and in comparison with other landscape disciplines and scholarly journals--through a variety of citation analysis tools, manual searches of the journal, and interviews of editors, publishers, and other decision makers in landscape architecture--shows that the journal is positioned to achieve some of these goals. Others will require substantive changes.

Theoretical urban policy literature predicts the likelihood of free riding in the management of common goods such as forested open space; such outcome is often characterized as a Prisoner's Dilemma game. Numerous cases exist in which neighboring jurisdictions cooperate to maintain public goods, challenging the expected results, yet theoretical explanations of these cases have not been fully developed. In this paper, we use an agent-based model to explore how underlying micro-behaviors affect the payoffs obtained by two neighboring municipalities in a hypothetical exurban area. Payoffs are measured in terms of regional forested space and of local tax revenue at the end of the agent-based simulations; the municipalities affect these payoffs through their choice of residential zoning policies and the spillover effect between the neighboring jurisdictions. Zoning restrictions influence the conversion of farmland into residential subdivisions of different types, and consequently the location of heterogeneous residential households in the region. Developers and residents respond to the changing landscape characteristics, thus establishing a feedback between early and future land-use patterns. The structure of the simulated payoffs is analyzed using standard game theory. Our analysis shows that a variety of games, in addition to Prisoner's Dilemma, can emerge between the neighboring jurisdictions. Other games encourage coordination or subsidization, offering some explanations for the unexpected observations. The game realized in any given context depends on the initial characteristics of the landscape, the value given to the objectives each township seeks to maximize, and the income distribution of the population.

We describe empirical results from a multi-disciplinary project that support modeling complex processes of land-use and land-cover change in exurban parts of Southeastern Michigan. Based on two different conceptual models, one describing the evolution of urban form as a consequence of residential preferences and the other describing land-cover changes in an exurban township as a consequence of residential preferences, local policies, and a diversity of development types, we describe a variety of empirical data collected to support the mechanisms that we encoded in computational agent-based models. We used multiple methods, including social surveys, remote sensing, and statistical analysis of spatial data, to collect data that could be used to validate the structure of our models, calibrate their specific parameters, and evaluate their output. The data were used to investigate this system in the context of several themes from complexity science, including have (a) macro-level patterns; (b) autonomous decision making entities (i.e., agents); (c) heterogeneity among those entities; (d) social and spatial interactions that operate across multiple scales and (e) nonlinear feedback mechanisms. The results point to the importance of collecting data on agents and their interactions when producing agent-based models, the general validity of our conceptual models, and some changes that we needed to make to these models following data analysis. The calibrated models have been and are being used to evaluate landscape dynamics and the effects of various policy interventions on urban land-cover patterns.

Landscape ecological science has produced knowledge about the relationship between landscape pattern and landscape processes, but it has been less effective in transferring this knowledge to society. We argue that design is a common ground for scientists and practitioners to bring scientific knowledge into decision making about landscape change, and we therefore propose that the pattern¿process paradigm should be extended to include a third part: design. In this context, we define design as any intentional change of landscape pattern for the purpose of sustainably providing ecosystem services while recognizably meeting societal needs and respecting societal values. We see both the activity of design and the resulting design pattern as opportunities for science: as a research method and as topic of research. To place design within landscape ecology science, we develop an analytic framework based on the concept of knowledge innovation, and we apply the framework to two cases in which design has been used as part of science. In these cases, design elicited innovation in society and in science: the design concept was incorporated in societal action to improve landscape function, and it also initiated scientific questions about pattern¿process relations. We conclude that landscape design created collaboratively by scientists and practitioners in many disciplines improves the impact of landscape science in society and enhances the saliency and legitimacy of landscape ecological scientific knowledge.

This collaborative essay grows out of a debate about the relationship between aesthetics and ecology and the possibility of an “ecological aesthetic” that affects landscape planning, design, and management. We describe our common understandings and unresolved questions about this relationship, including the importance of aesthetics in understanding and affecting landscape change and the ways in which aesthetics and ecology may have either complementary or contradictory implications for a landscape. To help understand these issues, we first outline a conceptual model of the aesthetics–ecology relationship. We posit that: 1. While human and environmental phenomena occur at widely varying scales, humans engage with environmental phenomena at a particular scale: that of human experience of our landscape surroundings. That is the human “perceptible realm.” 2. Interactions within this realm give rise to aesthetic experiences, which can lead to changes affecting humans and the landscape, and thus ecosystems. 3. Context affects aesthetic experience of landscapes. Context includes both effects of different landscape types (wild, agricultural, cultural, and metropolitan landscapes) and effects of different personal–social situational activities or concerns. We argue that some contexts elicit aesthetic experiences that have traditionally been called “scenic beauty,” while other contexts elicit different aesthetic experiences, such as perceived care, attachment, and identity. Last, we discuss how interventions through landscape planning, design, and management; or through enhanced knowledge might establish desirable relationships between aesthetics and ecology, and we examine the controversial characteristics of such ecological aesthetics. While these interventions may help sustain beneficial landscape patterns and practices, they are inherently normative, and we consider their ethical implications.

Yard-scale landscape designs can influence environmental quality through effects on habitat, stormwater runoff, and water quality. Native plant gardens may have ecological benefits, and previous research has shown that yards using these plants can be designed in ways that people find attractive. This study examines whether people are willing to pay more for more ecologically benign designs than for a lawn. A contingent choice survey was conducted in southeast Michigan in which people were presented with four different yard designs (three of which included native plants) in three different settings, with different monthly maintenance costs for each design. Respondents were asked to rank their choices of the yards while considering the maintenance costs they were presented. Results suggest that people are willing to pay more for well-designed yards including native plants than for lawns, and that their increased willingness to pay exceeds any increase in costs associated with the native plantings. These results should encourage homeowners, landscape designers, and the landscape plant industry to work with native plants. In this study, people were willing to pay more for designs that present gains for the environment, without government intervention and without social cost.

Landscape pattern indices have been discussed as tools for comparing the ecological consequences of alternative landscape plans and designs. While several landscape ecology investigations have demonstrated the applicability of pattern indices for characterizing landscapes, there is a lack of evidence that pattern indices imply ecological processes. We investigated the utility of landscape pattern indices for judging the habitat implications of alternative landscape plans or designs, and we compared our results to our colleagues’ application of a spatially explicit population (small mammal) habitat model for the same landscape plans. Results of our investigation suggest that planners and designers should be exceedingly cautious in making ecological inferences from landscape pattern index values applied to alternative landscape plans. For our high resolution data representing highly fragmented landscapes, indices were of limited utility in measuring pattern differences, and while reliable, were not valid for measuring differences in an ecological consequence: small mammal habitat.

Powerful computational tools are becoming available to represent the behavior of complex systems. Agent-based modeling, in particular, facilitates an examination of the system-level outcomes of the heterogeneous actions of a set of heterogeneous agents: for example, patterns of land-use and land-cover change, such as urban sprawl as a result of residential location decisions. These new tools create new demands for data, and empirical studies of the selection behavior of residents. Using resident responses from the 2001 Detroit Area Study survey, we compared two alternative approaches to characterizing the heterogeneous preferences of agents; both based on a factor analysis of resident responses to questions about their reasons for moving to their current location. We used cluster analysis to identify how many and what types of residents there are, grouped by similar preferences. We also evaluated the relationships between socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and location preferences using regression trees, and evaluated the fit of the relationship to determine the degree to which socioeconomic characteristics predict preferences. The results showed that the preferences of resident exurbans of single-family homes in the Detroit metropolitan area were heterogeneous and that distinct preference groups do exist in resident populations, but are not well characterized on the basis of simple socioeconomic and demographic variables. We conclude that, given the heterogeneous nature of preferences and a relatively limited number of preference groupings observed in the survey respondents, agent-based models simulating resident behavior should reflect this diversity in the population and incorporate distinct agent classes of empirically derived preference distributions.

In an interdisciplinary project to develop protocols for long-term cultural and ecological moni- toring of wetland restorations in Minnesota, we compared restored and reference wetlands on several eco- logical and cultural measures including land-use context, cultural perceptions, and management practices. Cultural measures were drawn from our surveys of visitors, neighbors, planners, and managers of the wet- lands. This paper discusses their perceptions of six metropolitan wetlands (four recent restorations and two reference sites), how cultural measures of their perceptions compared with selected site characteristics and biodiversity measures, and what results suggest for wetland design and management. Overall, sites that were perceived as more well-cared-for and as a good place to enjoy nature were perceived as more attractive. In addition, objective site characteristics, like cultural cues and natural landscape context, were related to perceived attractiveness. While plant species richness was not significantly related to perceived wetland attractiveness for our sites, bird species richness was related to attractiveness.

We investigated how future alternative designs for exurban residential subdivision development in agricultural landscapes might affect aquatic ecosystems and public perceptions, and we asked whether better aquatic ecological quality would correspond with public perceptions of greater landscape attractiveness. The alternative exurban futures we compared were: ecologically beneficial subdivisions, conventional subdivisions, and conventional agriculture. To judge their aquatic ecology effects we measured the chemistry and biota of six first-order streams within our study area, the Huron and Raisin River watersheds in the Detroit CMSA. We chose two stream catchments that exhibited land cover to represent the same proportions as each of three types of alternative exurban futures. Streams in catchments representing ecologically beneficial subdivision designs had the most total macroinvertebrate taxa, the most sensitive macroinvertebrate taxa, lowest nitrates, lowest total phosphorus, and lowest total suspended materials. Nutrient concentrations were highest in agricultural catchments, and suspended sediments were highest in conventional subdivision catchments. To compare public perceptions of the alternative futures, we surveyed 336 suburban and exurban adult residents of the upper Midwest. All respondents viewed digital imaging simulations of each of the futures and rated their attractiveness as if they were seen from the window of a home in the area. Ecologically beneficial futures were perceived as most attractive. Comparing the alternative futures, rankings of aquatic ecological quality were consistent with public perceptions of attractiveness.

The normative landscape scenario is one of many types of scenario methods that are used by landscape ecologists. We describe how normative landscape scenarios are different from other types and how these differences create special potential for engaging science to build landscape policy and for exploring scientific questions in realistic simulated landscapes. We describe criteria and a method for generating normative scenarios to realize this potential in both policy and landscape ecology research. Finally, we describe how the method and criteria apply to an interdisciplinary project that proposed alternative scenarios for federal agricultural policy and related futures for agricultural watersheds in Iowa, USA.

The aesthetic character and visual quality of transportation corridors as seen by local and visiting travelers in Minnesota were investigated. Highway corridor landscapes were broadly defined to include the entire "view from the road." This definition is intended to contribute to the substance of context-sensitive design by selecting characteristics of landscapes seen from the road that will be relevant for highway design and planning. It assumes that highway travel experiences can have a significant effect on the perceived attractiveness of the places where people live, work, and travel. The aesthetic initiative measurement system (AIMS) was developed and tested to provide a method for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to use to understand and monitor how travelers perceive the attractiveness of Minnesota's highway corridors and to inform planning, design, construction, and maintenance decision making with specificity. Development of the AIMS methodology involved MnDOT staff from several disciplines and local citizens in understanding perceptions of the value of Minnesota's highway planning, design, engineering, and maintenance choices. AIMS researched the problem of identifying what landscape characteristics seen from the highway are noticed for their aesthetic quality by travelers. AIMS measured the relative aesthetic value of those characteristics and then used those measurements to document the benefits for design and planning to monitor and compare landscape aesthetic values across space and time.

The contributions of current agricultural practices to environmental degradation and the social problems facing agricultural regions are well known. However, landscape-scale alternatives to current trends have not been fully explored nor their potential impacts quantified. To address this research need, our interdisciplinary team designed three alternative future scenarios for two watersheds in Iowa, USA, and used spatially-explicit models to evaluate the potential consequences of changes in farmland management. This paper summarizes and integrates the results of this interdisciplinary research project into an assessment of the designed alternatives intended to improve our understanding of landscape ecology in agricultural ecosystems and to inform agricultural policy. Scenario futures were digitized into a Geographic Information System GIS, visualized with maps and simulated images, and evaluated for multiple endpoints to assess impacts of land use change on water quality, social and economic goals, and native flora and fauna. The Biodiversity scenario, targeting restoration of indigenous biodiversity, ranked higher than the current landscape for all endpoints biodiversity, water quality, farmer preference, and profitability. The Biodiversity scenario ranked higher than the Production scenario which focused on profitable agricultural production in all endpoints but profitability, for which the two scenarios scored similarly, and also ranked higher than the Water Quality scenario in all endpoints except water quality. The Water Quality scenario, which targeted improvement in water quality, ranked highest of all landscapes in potential water quality and higher than the current landscape and the Production scenario in all but profitability. Our results indicate that innovative agricultural practices targeting environmental improvements may be acceptable to farmers and could substantially reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture in this region.

Care may be a way to engage people in planetary stewardship by connecting their responses to what they notice in everyday life with their effect on larger environmental systems. Care is a deep, pervasive cultural norm that is imposed upon what is noticed and noticeable to others. At the same time, care often evokes an immediate aesthetic response. Both responses provoke behavior to change, maintain, and protect landscape appearance. This essay examines whether the immediacy of the care response can be extended to effect stewardship at broader time and spatial scales. It describes how landscape evidence of care has a halo effect in which an overall impression of the appearance of the landscape affects assumptions about the people who are responsible for providing care, as well as assumptions about resource characteristics. Finally, it suggests that this halo effect of care can contribute to design and planning strategies that benefit environmental health and ecosystem services at broader scales.

Appearances matter for managing riparian landscapes because the appearance of landscapes affects public willingness to accept plans and designs that improve ecological quality. Riparian landscape design and planning should respect and strategically incorporate characteristics that the public values and expects to see. Such design can be quite novel in its ecological effects, but it also should be sufficiently familiar in appearance to correspond with cultural values. This paper describes some influential cultural values for riparian landscapes and demonstrates how attention to such values supports public acceptance of ecologically innovative design in rural and urban watersheds. (KEY TERMS: culture; design; landscape ecology; land use plan- ning; riparian; watershed management.)

We present a modeling framework that synthesizes social, economic, and ecological aspects of landscape change to evaluate how different agricultural policy and land tenure scenarios and land management preferences affect landscape pattern and downstream water quality. We linked a stylized agent-based model (ABM) of farmers' conservation practice adoption decisions with a water quality model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), to simulate the water quality effects of changing land tenure dynamics and different policies for crop revenue insurance in lieu of commodity payments over 41 years (1970-2010) for a predominantly agricultural watershed of Lake Erie. Results show that non-operator owner involvement in land management decisions yields the highest reduction in sediment and nutrient loads, and crop revenue insurance leads to more homogeneous farmer decisions and a slight increase in sediment and nutrient loads unless cross compliance with expanded conservation requirements is implemented.

This report provides an evaluation of methodologies for visual impact assessment (VIA). The report (a) evaluates state department of transportation (DOT) VIA procedures, methods, and practices that satisfy or exceed National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other requirements; (2) documents the use of different methodologies and approaches used by DOTs; (c) describes decision making frameworks used at state DOTs to undertake specific VIA techniques for a given project; (d) documents proven successful methods; (e) describes best practices illustrated by model case studies; and (f) documents promising new developments. The report will be of broad interest to state, regional, and local planners, project development staff, and environmental staff.

For landscape ecology to produce knowl- edge relevant to society, it must include considerations of human culture and behavior, extending beyond the natural sciences to synthesize with many other disci- plines. Furthermore, it needs to be able to support landscape change processes which increasingly take the shape of deliberative and collaborative decision making by local stakeholder groups. Landscape ecol- ogy as described by Wu (Landscape Ecol 28:1-11, 2013) therefore needs three additional topics of investigation: (1) the local landscape as a boundary object that builds communication among disciplines and between science and local communities, (2) iterative and collaborative methods for generating transdisciplinary approaches to sustainable change, and (3) the effect of scientific knowledge and tools on local landscape policy and landscape change. Collec- tively, these topics could empower landscape ecology to be a science for action at the local scale.

Culture changes landscapes and culture is embodied by landscapes. Both aspects of this dynamic are encompassed by landscape ecology, but neither has been examined sufficiently to produce cultural theory within the field. This paper describes four broad cultural principles for landscape ecology, under which more precise principles might be organized. A central underlying premise is that culture and landscape interact in a feedback loop in which culture structures landscapes and landscapes inculcate culture. The following broad principles are proposed: 1. Human landscape perception, cognition, and values directly affect the landscape and are affected by the landscape. 2. Cultural conventions powerfully influence landscape pattern in both inhabited and apparently natural landscapes. 3. Cultural concepts of nature are different from scientific concepts of ecological function. 4. The appearance of landscapes communicates cultural values.