Landscape Modelling
Description
Landscape modelling integrates the differing perspectives of the many disciplines that deal with the landscape. It is motivated not only by the desire for scientific understanding, but also by the real-time demands of 21st century postindustrial society, which include the twin imperatives of stabilizing damaged ecosystems on the one hand, and finding effective ways to use the landscape on the other. The discipline has the specific goal of designing and assessing future scenarios of landscape development, while not losing sight of its past history, both ecological and socio-cultural. This book encompasses the interrelated disciplines of geography, landscape ecology and geoinformatics, and by drawing on their theories and methodologies introduces the concept of a living landscape with human action an inseparable part of its evolution. It offers researchers and decision-makers a number of ideas on how our landscape can best be utilized. The content reflects the need for sustainable landscape development, at the same time as considering long-term continuity as a major condition which enables us to maintain the diversity and multifunctionality of landscapes at regional and macro-regional scales. Employing advanced terminology and methods, this book provides specific results especially for scientists and landscape professionals.
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Ji?rí And?el, Martin Balej, and Tomáš Oršulák
3.1 Stressors and Stress in a Landscape
The genesis of the term stress is closely associated with research in the psychological and biological disciplines (e.g. Shanteau & Dino, 1993). Generally, stress is a difficult concept to define. Early definitions varied in the extent to which they emphasized the responses of the individual, or the situations that caused disruptions of ongoing behaviour and functioning (Evans & Cohen, 1987). Appley and Trumbull (1967), McGrath (1970) and Mason (1975) have summarized several objections to each of these approaches to defining stress.
Stress is best considered as a complex rubric reflecting a dynamic, recursive relationship between environmental demands, individual and social resources to cope with those demands, and the individual’s appraisal of that relationship (Evans & Cohen, 1987). A stress-inducing factor is called a stressor. Stress is a manifestation of a stressor within a system. Four general types of environmental stressors have been identified in psychological theory: cataclysmic events, stressful life events, daily hassles, and ambient stressors (Baum, Singer, & Baum, 1982; Cambell, 1983; Lazarus & Cohen, 1977.)
Similar to the definition of stress in psychology, we can designate as a stressor any force or system of forces producing pressure, tension or causing deformity that is detrimental to the system it acts upon. In the context of environmental sciences, stress within an environmental system composed of biotic, abiotic and human elements can be defined as any deformity present in the system. Stress (or pressure, strain, disturbing force, obstacle or difficulty) can thus be defined as any stimulus the intensity of which is in excess of the norm (physical, ecological, social or economic).
In the normal fluctuation of a phenomenon, stress can be represented by an exceptionally strong/weak intensity or unusual frequency. Individual types of environmental systems may react in varying ways to different stressful stimuli. In the initial phase of stress response, a system operates on the principle of resilience, followed by the phase of resistance. In the final phase the system either breaks down entirely (i.e. changes its character) or compensates for the stress and continues to function as before.
Stress therefore can be compensated for entirely or partially, or it may not be compensated at all and the system breaks down. Some landscape ecologists (cf. Ingegnoli, 2002) claim that if the effect of a stressor is continuous (chronic), this may endanger the general “health” of the landscape. The Slovak school of landscape ecology devised a theory of environmental stressors (Miklós et al., 2002; Šúriová & Izakovi?cová, 1995; Izakovi?cová, Miklós, & Drdoš, 1997).
Other landscape ecologists (Ingegnoli, 2002; Lipský, 1998; Antrop, 2000; Erickson, 1999) also employ the terms environmental stressor, stress or anthropogenic pressure in connection with a negative effect on environmental conditions, the pathology of landscape and anthropogenic disturbances. Within a landscape system, there are of course natural stressors such as natural disturbances (degradation processes, natural radiation, volcanism, seismic activity and seismic processes). Environmental systems are able to a greater or lesser extent to prepare for the effects of these stressors."
