Ecological landscape planning techniques for biodiversity and sustainability

Approaches to land use planning have gone through considerable evolution during the past 30 years. Western nations have learned hard lessons about the consequences of not considering ecological process and structures when undertaking land use planning, development, and when harvesting resources. As a result, modern concepts of conservation biology and landscape level planning have developed and are beginning to be implemented in North America, Europe, Australia and portions of South America. An approach to ecological based landscape planning, as developed through several applications in Canada, is discussed. The approach incorporates principles of conservation biology and relies heavily on abiotic landscape components for mapping and interpretation. Landscape planning is defined and discussed according to three key components: (1) the planning framework; (2) ecological analysis; and (3) implementation of the whole. The planning framework includes the goals and objectives of the plan which is based on prevailing socio‐cultural values. The analysis attempts to determine full landscale representivity then maximize ecological integrity.