ABSTRACT  The metropolitan landscape includes more than just densely populated center cities; the surrounding countryside also supports important urban ecological and cultural functions. Given this larger context, our common future depends on new knowledge creation about metropolitan vulnerability, sustainability, resiliency, and regeneration. This special issue of Landscape Journal presents several translational perspectives on the metropolitan landscape from authors representing the ecological sciences (landscape ecology, urban ecology, conservation biology, and restoration ecology) and landscape architecture (landscape design, landscape planning, and regional planning). This introduction creates an intellectual road map for the important themes in this special issue: to explain translational research and show how it can be used; to help weave together various intellectual contributions to our understanding; and to provide potential avenues for future knowledge generation and collaboration in metropolitan landscape ecology.

KEYWORDS  Ecological design, metropolitan landscape, landscape ecology，urban ecology, translational research49043 
To establish a framework for this special issue, the metropolitan landscape is broadly defined to include the countryside as well as the city for four reasons: a city's ecological footprint stretches across watersheds; airsheds, and regions; many urbanites spend significant amounts of time recreating in rural places or have agrarian roots; alternative energy sources for cities will come from the conversion of plant biomass for fuel and heat; and future suburban population expansion is dependent on the availability of inexpensive farmland. This expanded definition directly addresses a gap in the discourse about urbanism, agrarianism, culture, and nature in the United States—a gap that, in itself, reflects deep political, institutional, economic, social, and ethical pisions about land. For example, rural issues are generally considered the territory of agriculture and natural resource policy while urban issues are the focus of housing, economic, and social policy bet, the environmental consequences of urban and industrial growth are not limited by disciplinary boundaries and affect all people without regard for their social, economic, ethnic, racial, or educational background. Our recognition of these contradictions inspired the central challenge of this special issue—how may we better understand the systemic problems influencing the ecosystem health and sustainability of metropolitan landscapes, and how can translational research be used to address these problems?

This issue collects a group of papers presented at the symposium Myths and Realities of Ecology, Design, and Ecosystem Health in the Metropolitan Landscape, organized at the University of Minnesota's College of Design in April 2006. The symposium included eight experts from the ecological sciences, landscape architecture, and planning, who were subsequently invited to develop their perspectives about the issues facing the sustainability of the metropolitan landscape. In particular, we paid attention to uses of the word "design” emerging within an unexpected context—the ecological sciences. This is an important trend for landscape architects to be aware of. Ecologists are using "design" in a number of ways that did not exist ten years ago: (1) the process of designing a conservation plan or public policy; (2) the spatial arrangement of a landscape's structure and function that can enhance ecosystem services; and (3) the design or vision for a future landscape through scenario development.

For two days, symposium participants shared thoughts and visions about these important emerging ideas in metropolitan landscape ecology, and how translational approaches—that is to say, the translation of science to real-world problem solving—can reconnect people to nature and improve ecosystem health. In the end, the cross pollination of ideas at the symposium was inspiring and expanded our understanding of our respective disciplines. During the symposium, it became apparent that translational research could play a key role in addressing one of the most important dilemmas in landscape architecture and the ecological sciences: the "it depends" problem. When landscape architects ask ecologists how to apply scientific knowledge to real world situations, such as biopersity conservation or water quality protection, invariably the answer is, "it depends ”.This is frustrating. What landscape architects really want is a single book that can provide the answers to their questions, something like, "Time Savers Standards for Ecology." Unfortunately this book will likely never exist, and the challenge of the "it depends" problem will remain for a new generation of landscape architects to grapple with. From the perspective of conservation biology, Michael Soule and Gordon Orians (2001, 273) emphasize that the "it depends" problem relates to how science can inform the contextural issues of nature, culture, and society In comparison to the landscape architects' perspective, conservation biologists place more emphasis on the generalities of the "it depends" problem rather than the specifics, such as the exact dimensions for the construction of ecosystem structure like corridor and buffer widths. 城市景观生态英文文献和中文翻译:http://www.lwfree.com/fanyi/lunwen_51862.html