Working group

Landscape structure

For many years, the Landscape Structure working groupd was one of the most active working groups in the German IALE chapter with regularly held workshops. One of the last activities was a symposium at the IALE World Congress 2015 in Portland with a subsequent Special Issue "Landscape Indicators – Monitoring of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services at Landscape Level" at Ecological Indicators. The working group was finally dissolved in 2021.

Targets of this working group were the following: 
 

• To exchange, discuss, and assess approaches and terminology of landscape structure analysis;
    
• Exchange of experiences from structure analyses in different fields in order to investigate the validity, sensitivity, and representativeness of indices and benchmarks; 
   
• Integration of the landscape structural approach into the ecosystem services assessment;
   
• Application of landscape metrics in landscape monitoring. In order to do so, structural indicators need to be identified, which are suitable for the monitoring and assessment of landscape change or single processes – also for comparing different landscape types; 
   
• Integration of landscape metrics in assessment procedures for planning purposes. Among others, methods, which support the selection of planning alternatives based on landscape metrics, remain to this target; 
   
• Support of dynamic, more process-oriented protection strategies, which do not only target specific objects, but take also into account superior structural principles 

The working group organises German-speaking workshops and symposia in the framework of international conferences. Results are published in proceedings and Special Issues of scientific journals.