INTEGRATING THE AESTHETIC VALUE OF LANDSCAPES AND BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY.

Tribot, A.S, Deter, J, & Mouquet, N. (2018).

Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 285, 20180971, doi:0.1098/rspb.2018.0971

Key message : Here, we describe the conceptual background, current methodologies and future challenges of assessing landscape aesthetics and its relationship with biodiversity. We highlight the methodological gaps between the assessment of landscape aesthetics, ecological diversity and functioning. We discuss the challenges associated with connecting landscape aesthetics with ecological value, and the scaling issues in the assessment of human aesthetics perception. To better integrate aesthetic value and ecological components of biodiversity, we propose to combine the study of aesthetics and the understanding of ecological function at both the species and landscape levels.

Human perception and aesthetic experience of nature vary according to the organizational levels and the level at which humans integrate and share this information. The different organizational scales of the transmitter (i.e. the observed landscape) are studied in different fields of ecological science, from functional ecology, community and ecosystem ecology to landscape ecology. From the receiver point of view, cognitive processes associating visual information to emotion are studied in neuro-aesthetics and psychology. How these emotions are shared within groups concerns the field of sociology. Social science and psychology also study the influence of landscape perception on human behaviours or mental health. Philosophy, art and humanities connect the receiver and the transmitter by studying the relationship between culture and nature.

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OTHER TOPICS: Aesthetics of Biodiversity, Biogeography, Macroecology & Ecophylogenetics, Experimental Evolution, Functional Biogeography, Functional Rarity, Nature for Future, Metacommunities, Metaecosystems, Reviews and Synthesis, Trophic Biogeography & Metaweb