Land | Special Issue : Feature Papers for "Landscape Ecology" Section (Second Edition)

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Feature Papers for "Landscape Ecology" Section (Second Edition)

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Editors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving the relationships between ecological environmental processes and particular ecosystems within a variety of landscape scales and organizational levels of research and policy. Landscapes are spatially heterogeneous geographic areas characterized by diverse interacting areas or ecosystems, ranging from relatively natural terrestrial and aquatic systems to human-dominated environments, such as agricultural and urban settings. Landscape ecology predominantly focuses on the relationships surrounding patterns, processes, and scales, which often couple biophysical and socioeconomic sciences. Landscape ecology specifically seeks to integrate human activities influencing patterns and processes and also provide information that is integral for land use planning.

This Special Issue aims to tackle complex problems related to landscape ecology from a broad perspective and will address issues such as ecosystem services assessment, integrated catchment management, protected area monitoring and management, connectivity assessment, land use and land cover change, the relationship between landscape pattern analysis and ecological processes, spatial resilience to disturbances, changes in spatial structure, landscapes as socio-ecological systems, etc.

This Special Issue seeks contributions concerning the dynamics of patterns and processes at landscape scales related to any land use or land cover type, including aquatic and marine systems. Manuscripts can be original research articles covering theory and applications or "state of the science" reviews, but should explicitly address scale. Interdisciplinary manuscripts are particularly welcome, as are manuscripts from fields adjacent to landscape ecology, such as geography, macroecology, agriculture, and biological diversity.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Shiliang Liu
Prof. Dr. Benjamin Burkhard
Prof. Dr. Diane Pearson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

landscape ecology
remote sensing
land use and land cover change
ecological processes
connectivity assessment
ecosystem service
landscape services
agricultural landscapes
landscape modelling
landscape restoration
landscape planning
landscape management
landscape sustainability
spatial resilience
biological diversity
global change

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Research

21 pages, 3214 KB

Open AccessArticle

Accessibility Evaluation and Educational Implications for Ecological Civilization Education Fields: A Case Study of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China

by Jiayuan Mao, Zechen Wang and Shiliang Liu

Land 2026, 15(8), 1389; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081389 - 2 Aug 2026

Viewed by 199

Abstract

Ecological civilization education has become an important component of environmental education and sustainable development strategies in China. Field-based learning in real ecological environments is essential for helping students understand ecological processes and human–environment relationships. However, limited attention has been paid to whether schools can spatially access ecological learning sites within feasible travel-time ranges, especially in plateau and mountainous regions where transportation constraints are strong. From the perspective of ecosystem service flow, forest parks can be regarded as supply sites of ecological learning services, secondary schools as demand sites, and road networks as the pathways through which such services are transformed into actual educational opportunities. To address this gap, this study evaluates the accessibility of forest-park-based ecological learning resources for secondary schools in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. Taking 11 national forest parks and 137 secondary schools as research objects, a network-based travel-time model was constructed using road network data, and 1 h, 3 h, and 6 h service areas were generated to assess forest park service capacity and school accessibility. The results show that forest park educational service capacity is highly uneven. Nimu, Jiedexiu, and Caina Forest Parks have the highest service capacity, each covering more than 60 secondary schools within 6 h, while nearly half of the parks show relatively limited coverage. School accessibility also presents a clear core–periphery pattern, with high-accessibility schools concentrated around Lhasa and nearby transport corridors, whereas many schools in western and northern Tibet remain outside the 6 h service range. Based on the accessibility levels, differentiated field education strategies are proposed, including short field observation, one-day field trips, cross-regional fieldwork, and virtual or school-based alternatives. This study provides a spatial analytical framework for understanding the flow of ecological learning services from forest parks to schools and offers evidence for optimizing geography field education and improving equitable access to ecological civilization education in mountainous regions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers for "Landscape Ecology" Section (Second Edition))

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