AUTHORS: Laura R. Musacchio*, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
ABSTRACT: One of the key challenges today for landscape planners is to reframe the meaning of ecosystem services. In this context, alternative concepts such as ecologies have potential to complement ecosystem services when applied to human-nature relationships in changing landscapes. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) review some of the major critique approaches that are used by landscape planners to translate the meaning of ecosystem services and (2) introduce why ecologies has potentially helpful insights to complement ecosystem services. To address these objectives, a conceptual framework is used to examine how landscape planners have used critique in their academic writings to reframe the meaning of ecosystem services. This framework is then revised as a potential scenario to reframe the meanings of ecologies and ecosystem services. In the conceptual framework, landscape planners have used three critique approaches to reframe the meaning of ecosystem services to advance the understanding of human-nature relationships in changing landscapes. Yet, they have identified some important gaps that have emerged when it is applied. These gaps are part of the rationale for why landscape planning is at an important crossroads with ecosystem services. This rationale is then extended to create a potential scenario for why a revised conceptual framework is needed for landscape planners to reframe the meanings of ecologies and ecosystem services.
