IALE started in the former Czech Republic in 1982, as a means of enabling travel outside the Soviet bloc, but the first open meeting took place in Veldhoven, in the Netherlands in 1981, followed by regular international conferences. Our Chapter was initiated in a small meeting held in University College London, which led to the first conference, held in Nottingham in 1992.
The early meetings contained much that belonged to mainstream ecology, e.g. changes in heath lands, although the papers had underlying themes of landscape ecology - such as fragmentation. Our meetings contributed to the progressive development of Landscape Ecology as a science. The major topics that are now central to the discipline will be identified in the paper, together with their relationship to our related subject, landscape architecture. Future topics which need to be addressed will also be discussed.
Since 1992 an wide range of quantitative and statistical approaches have now been applied to subjects varying from meta-populations to landscape monitoring. In this respect, Geographical Information Systems, which were not widely available in 1992, have played a key role.
We are now one of the leading chapters of IALE, and are in a strong and healthy position to maintain the high standards we have set.