Core concepts of landscape ecology

People from different backgrounds may have various opinions and methods dealing with landscape ecology. As a basic ecology theory for decision making in land use planning and resource management, it should provide sound scientific principles, which means some core concepts for landscape ecology need to be established. This paper attempts to introduce some core concepts for landscape ecology, with brief analysis, including: the integrity of landscape system and the heterogeneity of landscape elements; scale in landscape ecology; mosaics of landscape structure; spatial aggregation and spread of ecological flow; physical cultural nature of landscape; the irreversible and human dominated landscape evolution; the multi-value of landscape.