The new assets of landscape ecology in the face of global challenges

International audienceIn an ever-changing world threatened by multiple, wide-ranging and sometimes sudden crises, the ecological sciences need to assess how they can contribute to effectively addressing these emerging issues. Landscape ecology has evolved significantly in recent decades. Its concepts, methods, tools and results open new perspectives and are particularly relevant to address problems for which intermediate scales, such as landscapes, seem to be the most appropriate for action. Moreover, landscape ecology can be mobilized to address a wide range of interrelated issues such as global health, climate change, biodiversity conservation and food security. Spatio-temporal heterogeneity, at the heart of landscape ecology concepts, is now seen as a way of adapting to global changes. Remote sensing data and methods could also provide useful information for analyzing evolution trajectories and steering the socio-ecosystems. Developments in spatial modelling are contributing to society debates with increasingly refined scenarios of expected or desirable changes to guide realistic and fair transitions. However, the production of new, finer and more precise data and knowledge is not always enough to trigger the necessary changes and to anticipate future crises. Interactions between scientistsand territorial stakeholders are often crucial to move from knowledge development to action. Because landscapes are socio-ecological systems, the social dimension of landscape analysis, such as developed through european landscape ecology is animportant axis in which a development of tools and concepts is urgently needed. This presentation urges scientists to take up these issues, to develop transdisciplinary research questions and methods and to disseminate their results widely to accelerate the necessary transitions