城市景观生态英文文献和中文翻译(2)

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Ironically, the word "design" is appearing more often in the ecological literature with ecologists' growing interest in the application of science to biopersity conservation, reserve design, conservation planning, and endangered species. These issues are of concern to many landscape architects and planners too, but their approach to design is different. Design from the ecologists' perspective is usually used in the context of the creation of reserve systems for biopersity and/or specific wildlife species. Landscape architects and planners design for wildlife in relation to human needs and other environmental concerns (e.g., water quality, visual quality, and recreational access). Both uses of "design” are part of an emerging terminology that is found in both disciplines: conservation design and planning.

As presented here, these eight articles reflect a two-year publication process structured to encourage disciplinary respect, interdisciplinary feedback, and inpidual reflection. Readers will find that the authors have shared their expert opinions about how well ecological concepts are being integrated into design; there are some instances when their opinions are controversial. For some of the ecologists, this symposium was the first time that they had interacted with many landscape architects, and they experienced a learning curve at two levels—audience feedback at the symposium, and peer-review feedback later in the publication process. In addition, the landscape architects learned more about the concerns of ecologists. Although landscape architects, architects, and planners have made important progress in understanding how ecological principles can be integrated into the built environment, many questions remain to be answered.

WEB OF IDEAS: ORGANIZATION OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

The collected articles all emphasize translational research, and are organized, around three main themes:

.The vulnerable metropolitan landscape

.Perspectives on metropolitan landscape sustainability

.Translational explorations: Sustainability resilience and regeneration.

For those familiar with the literature about collaborative work between ecologists and landscape architecture, the use of translational research may be new. In the past, readers have usually come across the dichotomous terms theoretical and applied research. Theoretical usually was used to signal `scientific' research and applied was often reserved for design and planning research and practice. At many universities, these words have become value laden—theoretical research often or traditionally understood as "better" than applied research. This issue has created tension in universities for many years. In this regard, one discipline that seems to have successfully navigated the pide between theoretical and applied research is medicine. The process medical researchers use to bring scientific discoveries from research into clinical practice is called translational research (National Institutes of Health 2007). This process thus acknowledges the interdependency of both modes of knowledge creation.

For the purposes of this special issue, I propose an expanded definition of translational research that is directed toward environmental professionals: a collaborative learning process between scientists, designers, planners, and engineers who seek to solve complex environmental problems by connecting scientific theory, concepts, and principles to the design and planning of the built environment. This definition of translational research assumes that such approaches and methods are transdisciplinary—not only are interactions among scientists, designers, and planners important, but public participation is a vital part of the process that should include practitioners, elected officials, local residents, and others.

Translational research has been present in both the ecological sciences and landscape architecture for a number of decades, but the disciplines have valued it in different ways. Some recent efforts in the 1990s and early 2000s emphasized the integration of ecological science into ecosystem management (Christensen et al. 1996), conservation science into conservation planning (Groves 2003), and landscape ecology into landscape planning and design (Dramstad et al. 1996; Musacchio and Wu 2004; Forsyth and Musacchio 2005). Within the discipline of landscape architecture, translational research has been particularly evident in landscape planning, landscape perception, and ecological design research—among the key vehicles for the dissemination of knowledge between universities and professional practice. In the ecological sciences, the application of ecological knowledge has been associated largely with natural resource science and management (e.g., forest resources, wildlife biology, range ecology, and so on). But things are changing in ecology. Theoretical ecologists are beginning to recognize that translational research offers an important opportunity to link sustainable design to sustainability science—a recent paradigm shift in the sciences that investigates the complex interactions between people and the environment (Kates et al. 2001; Clark and Dickinson 2003).