Land mosaics and landscape change 239(I) Sense ofplace. The intertwining of built structures and greenspaces that
persist over time creates a place that people care for and remember.
(J) Community gardens (allotments). Joining neighbors digging in the soil and
growing their own plants and foods on tiny adjoining plots enhances
an understanding of nature and creates valuable social bonds that
strengthen acommunity.
(K) Commuter-station areas for urban residents.Community gardens, bicycle
parks, walking paths, and recreation areas centered around commuter-
rail stations provide important accessible resources and values for urban
residents concentrated in high-density metro areas.Land mosaics and landscape change
This fifth and last category of principles highlights the big picture. Land
mosaics emphasize the structure or spatial pattern of a landscape or urban
region, including how nature and people are arranged. Land change then focuses
on how the pattern is altered or changes, plus the associated functional changes
over time. Change may be catalyzed by overall planning or decision, or produced
bythemultitude of little steps taken by people (Odum1982), or caused by natural
systems. For these subjects, Pickett and White(1985), Zonneveld and Forman
(1990), Forman (1995,2004a), Dramstadet al.(1996), Ludwiget al.(1997),Losada
et al.(1998), Dale and Haeuber (2001), Ingegnoli (2002), Gutzwiller(2002), Foster
and Aber (2004), Chenet al.(2004), Lindenmayer and Fischer (2006), Erickson
(2006), and Moore (2007)are particularly useful. Also see Chapter3.
The two subgroupings are: (a) land mosaics; and (b) landscape change.
Land mosaics
(A) Structure--function--change feedbacks.Landscape structure or pattern con-
trols landscape function (how the area works), which alters structure,
in turn causing function to change.
(B) Spatial scales.Ecological and human conditions in an area (such as a
landscape) are strongly affected by patterns and processes at three scales:
thebroader scale (e.g., region); the finer scale (e.g., large patches within
thelandscape); and surrounding areas (e.g., competing or collaborating)
at the same scale.
(C) Hierarchical structure.Aspatial hierarchy of habitat sizes, stream orders,
and population sizes controls the amounts and directions of flows and
movements across a landscape, and patterns and processes of a partic-
ular type tend to differ at different spatial scales.