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Are you interested in landscape sustainability science and its application?

Our summary today works with the editorial article titled Advancing landscape sustainability science: theoretical foundation and synergies with innovation in methodology, design and application from 2020 by Chuan Liao, Jiangxiao Qiu, Bin Chen, Deliang Chen, Bojie Fu, Matei Georgescu, Bhunyang He, G. Darrel Jenerette, Xia Li, Xiaoyan Li, Xin Li, Bading Qiuying, Peijun Shi, and Janguo Wu, published in the Landscape Ecology journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how landscape sustainability science as a place-based, use-inspired science can improve the dynamic relationships between ecosystem services and human well-being. This article presents the theoretical foundation of landscape sustainability science, discusses recent innovations and examines the applications to address sustainability challenges.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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We are experiencing dramatic socioeconomic and environmental changes, such as rising populations, escalating resource demands, altering climate and deteriorating pollution. These have significantly transformed landscapes and our human experiences. Fundamental life-sustaining processes have been jeopardised by climate change or the loss of biological diversity for example, which endangers human society in its safe operations. So it is crucial to understand how to design, conserve and manage our landscapes to sustainably provide ecosystem services which are essential to sustain human well-being now and in the future. Landscape sustainability science, abbreviated to LSS tries to do so to achieve the sustainable development goals established by the United Nations.

So what is sustainability science? It is the result of the scientific research of sustainability and is comprised of many connecting concepts, like sustainability meaning the need to meet present needs without compromising future generations, or the triple bottom line of simultaneously achieving environmental, social and economic sustainability, or the weak and strong sustainability, etc. Landscape sustainability science embraces and enriches these key concepts with highlighting the basic role of spatial heterogeneity. LSS also alludes that the approach of landscapes is the optimal scale to understand the dynamic relationship between humans and nature, thus consequently achieve sustainability of ecosystems and human well-being while it stresses the importance of cross-scale interactions and feedbacks for the resilience of landscapes to environmental changes. Finally, LSS underlines the need for adaptive management, governance and interventions to improve the reciprocal human-environment connection across scales.

The use of computational tools and technology, particularly their connection to scientific data is increasingly important to answer basic questions on hot to achieve sustainability goals across different landscapes. Modelling, such as agent-based modelling and system dynamics modelling, is an important approach to investigate landscape sustainability and integrate the social and environmental components of coupled systems. Scenario-based approach is another popular method for anticipating the future given increasing complexity and uncertainty, spanning across natural resource management, land use planning, environmental conservation and landscape sustainability. Using simulations can help researchers to explore future ecosystem services and examine climate change adaptation at different spatial scales, and even involve the stakeholders to elaborate on the different scenarios. Going even further, current machine learning and artificial intelligence advancements help increasingly to explore variables and their relations.

Landscape design is crucial for extending the impact of LSS in the real world. Design means any intentional configuration of landscape compositions for providing ecosystems services and meeting societal needs. Design provides a platform for scientists and stakeholders to apply scientific knowledge to support decision-making on landscape change. Landscape design thus forms the basis for understanding the interactions, patterns and processes, and offers evidence to support adaptive management. Design needs to consider human needs, behaviours and activities throughout the landscape to achieve landscape sustainability and real impact. According to this effort, landscape design is connected to social sciences, stakeholders, and uses iterative and reflexive approaches and scientific tools to achieve its aims.

Implementing landscape designs, complemented with geo-design for sustainable outcomes requires clear communication of the opportunities and concerns across the stakeholders. Therefore, consensus is needed by professionals and stakeholders which also considers the future landscape functions, social values and justice, and the implications of higher-level plans and policies. The design approach needs to foster the collective exploration of possibilities before accepting any plans, and this action can better facilitate knowledge co-production and strengthen the sense of ownership and responsibility for the stakeholders.

In particular, combining design proposal creation and spatial analysis can lead to a revival of optimisation in the planning process which systematically searches through the space under different design considerations. If properly integrated, with LSS perspectives and approaches, geo-design can greatly contribute to promoting the science and practice of landscape sustainability.

Landscape sustainability science can be applied to many aims, but the authors chose to focus on food production, which is arguably one of the most crucial challenges for human society in the 21^st century. With better approaches coming from LSS, 9 billion people can be fed, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced, and landscape degradation and ecosystems service loss can be stopped. Knowledge of the functioning of agricultural-urban-natural landscapes sheds light on the scope for design, the stakeholders to engage, the variables to monitor and the management practices to adopt. Promoting the application of LSS and the collaboration among scientists, design professionals, and local stakeholders, long-term sustainability can be ensured with developing adaptive governance and better sustainable landscape designs.

It is necessary to apply interdisciplinary research frameworks, such as LSS – landscape sustainability science, for designing, conserving and managing our landscapes to sustainably provide ecosystem services and deliver societal needs now and into the future. There are many tools and advancements which can help better do such investigations with modelling and scenario explorations. Landscape design with geo-design based on such scientific information can allow researchers and practitioners to harness theoretical and methodological innovations for achieving sustainability goals. Although LSS can be used in either rural or urban settings, at its core is the emphasis on integration across different landscapes at a broader spatial context. The strong sustainability perspective suggests that long-term regional sustainability can only be achieved by integrating context-based sustainability in urban, agricultural, and natural landscapes so as to minimize the e regional ecological footprint.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Landscape sustainability science is rooted in sustainability science, resilience, landscape ecology, and many others to bring sustainability to the practice with various innovations such as modelling and scenario investigations.
2. Landscape design – as any intentional configuration of landscape compositions for providing ecosystem services and meeting societal needs – provides a platform for scientists and stakeholders to apply scientific knowledge to support decision-making on landscape change.
3. The strong sustainability perspective suggests that long-term regional sustainability can only be achieved by integrating context-based sustainability in urban, agricultural and natural landscapes to minimize the regional ecological footprint.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Where is science learning from the practitioners? The landscape architects, just to mention a special group, are doing these plannings in real life and they have immense wisdom about practical solutions. How can science learn from practitioners at the same time? How can we create a feedback loop for both sides?
2. What are the biggest obstacles for landscape sustainability science to be used in practice? And how can we overcome of these?
3. How are you taking part in designing your regional landscape as a stakeholder and a spatial expert?

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