Zev Naveh - Böcker

In the preface to the softcover edition of this book in 1989, we stated: Since the publication of the first edition of this book, landscape ecology has made great strides. It has overcome its continental isolation and has also established itself in the English-speaking world. By attracting both problem inquiry and problem-solving-oriented scientists with different cultural, academic, and profes­ sional backgrounds from all over the world, it has broadened not only its geo­ graphical but also its conceptual and methodological scopes. We are pleased to confirm in 1993 that the growth of landscape ecology continues, and to again express our gratification at the encouraging re­ sponse to this first English-language monograph on the subject and its contribution to these developments. As before, we feel special satisfac­ tion that it has reached not only the shelves of libraries and academic re­ searchers, but that it has also appealed to professional practitioners, teachers, and their students from industrialized and developing countries, embracing the broad range of fields related to landscape ecology in the natural sciences as well as in the humanities.

Capitalizing on forty years of intensive ecological studies, this anthology presents a collection of widely dispersed major publications on theoretical and practical Mediterranean, global environmental and landscape issues. Each chapter features a comprehensive study of ecological and landscape issues, synthesized in the introduction, and woven with autobiographical experiences. The concluding chapter calls for a transdisciplinary shift in all environmental scientific fields and particularly in landscape and restoration ecology, to cope with the complex, closely interwoven ecological, socio-economical, political and cultural crises facing human society during the present crucial transition from the industrial to the post-industrial, global information age.Updating and broadening the scope of the groundbreaking Springer book on Landscape Theory and Applications by the author and Lieberman (1994), this is a unique transdisciplinary attempt based on advanced systems complexity theories, which link the natural and human sciences.

The environmental movement of the 1960s made educationists in some parts of the world aware of the significance and importance of ecology in curricula at all levels of education, from kindergarten to post-secondary. A great deal of progress was made in the early 1970s in incorporating environmental awareness programs into educa­ tional systems go that what was once considered a fad was gradually becoming a part of formal education in a number of institutions, especially in Canada and the U.S.A. It was therefore appropriate that an international scientific body devote some time to the issue of ecology in education. Early in 1976, I suggested to the International Association for Ecology (Inteco1) that a symposium on Environmental Education be included in the program of the Second International Congress of Ecology scheduled to be held in Jerusalem in September 1978. In the first draft program of the Congress, the topic was included as a poster session. I considered this inadequate and appealed to the Congress Steering Committee to focus greater attention on environ­ mental education. The first draft program contained phrases like "utilization of resources", "conservation problems", "environmental moni toring", and "irreversible changes". These phrases more or less assumed that people in general understood ecological principles. Literature on environmental education seems to suggest that a wide gap separated most of the professional ecologists from a large portion of mankind primarily because we the ecologists have paid scant attention to the ecological education of world's citizens.