The importance of a ‘landscape scale’ approach to research and management of our ecosystems and natural resources is becoming increasingly topical in our everyday news. This spring edition illustrates how recent events, such as the devastating flooding affecting thousands of homes and livelihoods across the UK, and the recently released IPPC working group 2 report have brought landscape ecology to the forefront. Only through catchment scale management, considering the downstream effects of upstream management, can we begin to reduce the potential impact of future flooding events, the frequency and magnitude of which are likely to be exacerbated by climate change.
The importance of maintaining healthy landscapes for improving health and wellbeing, particularly the importance of trees in reducing and controlling air pollution, in light of the recent air quality warnings in central and southern England, are also highlighted in this edition.
Reflecting on the increased attention on landscape ecology, several events are planned for the rest of this year with the postgraduate workshop in the summer and the 2014 ialeUK conference, focusing on urban landscape ecology, to be held this September. Abstracts are currently being accepted, so please be sure to check out the newsletter so not to miss out!