Epistemological bases of landscape ecology

Landscape began to be cited as a scientific technical term in the nineteenth century. Since then it has been definedaccording to different philosophical references, where it is possible to see a clear dualism in its meaning. This is amatter of intense debate within the social and natural sciences: the physical geography proposes an understandingof the landscape as an ecological system, whereas the human geography turns to the interpretative vision. There areEuropean and North American roots of the ecological landscape, being the latter more recent (1980s), which isbased on ecosystem ecology and spatial modeling/analysis. Its development was favored by the advent of satelliteimagery and popularization of personal computers, therefore providing important resources for imaging and geostatisticalanalyzes. But still, there are different positions to be taken by the researcher working in this area.Metzger (2001) suggests adopting an integrated approach, where the ecological context and human action areconsidered and managed as mandatory elements in environmental dynamics. Our study aimed to list some of the keyconcepts of landscape considered by biologists in their research on landscape ecology.