Linking landscape ecology and land system architecture for land system science: an introduction to the special issue

Explaining global environmental change requires an understanding of the relationships that exist between social systems and the natural environment. Creating integrative research frameworks capable of explaining these coupled human and natural systems has been a central activity in this long-standing intellectual project. One way to advance framework development is to focus on relationships among people, patterns, and processes. Two fields that have been making simultaneous advances to this triad are landscape ecology and land system architecture. In the introduction to this special issue, we highlight new research streams linking these two fields for a more robust Land System Science. We identify three fruitful avenues where these two fields can be linked to advance our theoretical understanding of the land system and develop broadly applicable mixed methodological tools: a renewed study of social and ecological processes, deeper engagement with this issues surrounding scale, and enhanced analyses of ecosystem services.