The Science and Practice of Landscape Stewardship

Prominent voices in landscape ecology have called for moving toward a science of landscape sustainability, i.e. toward a “place-based, use-inspired science of understanding and improving the dynamic relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being in changing landscapes” (Wu, 2013). This idea is at the heart of the emerging paradigm of landscape stewardship, which may be understood as an inclusive notion for all individual and collaborative efforts toward achieving landscape sustainability. Landscape stewardship builds on the actions of people, their appreciation for, and awareness of, the multiple landscape values that they perceive as crucial for their own well-being. In general terms, stewardship strategies assess and reduce vulnerability to known stresses, develop proactive strategies to shape uncertain change, and advance transformational changes to potentially more favourable trajectories. This presentation synthesizes the conceptual foundations of landscape stewardship and linkages to concepts within natural as well as social sciences disciplines. We will systematically explore and evaluate the practical implementation of stewardship-approaches in different fields of sustainable landscape management, from agriculture and forestry to urban landscaping to coastal and marine stewardship. We provide an outlook on the current state of the science and practice of landscape stewardship and its potentials for achieving landscape sustainability. The presentation is based on a recent book project (Bieling & Plieninger, 2017).