Call n.22

Number TWENTY-TWO

Introduction to issue n.22 of 2025: Cultural Habitat and Landscape Ecology

The responsibility and contribution that the construction world has taken, takes and will take on the defence of our Planet’s diversity are increasingly evident by the analysis of the cultural-component arrangement in human settlements’ places. Thanks to the manifold visions from which this complex phenomenon can be observed, as the Landscape Ecology discipline proposes on a global scale, it becomes impossible not to attribute to the anthropic world the cause of a number of transformations on Earth, many of which have generated dangerous levels of instability, not only to the animal and plant world, but also to man himself.

In this framework, Landscape Ecology is therefore modelled as a new science that could provide interpretation keys and solutions for the conflicting coexistence of natural and anthropic life, both in cities and in the countryside: a new branch of wisdom that, through various experiences, establishes a "... meeting point of different disciplines and perspectives focused on natural and cultural aspects of landscape and seascape.”[1] It is an approach that “… emphasizes the interaction between spatial pattern and ecological process, that is the causes and consequences of spatial heterogeneity across a range of scales.”[2]

By focusing more on the relationships between landscape elements and ecosystems rather than on the individual elements of the ecosystems themselves, this discipline allows to address the processes as far as the flows of energy, nutrients and species are concerned, and ultimately to face the ecological dynamics of the landscape mosaic across time.

The object of this new issue is therefore the relationship between anthropic-transformation processes on land and the damage to the landscape and its constituent elements.

In particular, eligible Authors are required to observe, with scientific objectivity developed through studies and research, the role and responsibility of anthropic pressure on landscape transformation as well as on its natural, biotic and abiotic, components, through the peculiar paradigms of Landscape Ecology, defined as "... the study of interactions, across space and time, between the structure and function of physical, biological and cultural components of landscape; marine, freshwater, and on land.”[3]

The new issue of the journal therefore aims to collect contributions, articles, research and innovative ideas thanks to which a cultural scenario could be developed through which to frame and gather the dynamics underlying the number of ecological crises, today deranging our Planet, and mainly with the aim of understanding which the responsibilities were, provided by the built environment, by the works and infrastructures that define the cultural systems interacting with the territory itself, and that substantially modify the landscape and the connected ecosystems.

Issue n. 22: Cultural Habitat and Landscape Ecology, in particular declined according to the following sub-topics:

1. Architecture and Landscape Ecology
2. STEM role^[4] in cultural habitats’ construction 
3. Urban habitat in Landscape Ecology
4. Resource use and ecology
5. Design role in Landscape Ecology
6. Ecosystem-compatible technologies
   
   

[1] https://www.landscape-ecology.uk

[2] Turner, M.G., Gardner, R. H. & O’Neill R. V. (2001). Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice. Springer

[3] https://www.landscape-ecology.uk

[4] Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics

All submitted papers will be assessed by the Editorial Board and “double peer blindly” reviewed by an international panel of experts in the specific sectors.

The Journal is:

• Indexed in SCOPUS since the issue n. 9; SCOPUS starting from number 9;
• Included in the Italian ANVUR Scientific Journals from October the 31st, 2018 (thus, the papers here published have also a recognition as VQR (the research assessment criteria) products;
• Included in the Italian ANVUR classification of Journals as A Class, from April the 7th, 2020, with a retrospective recognition since 2016.

Magazine main subjects - Construction technology, Material science, Survey and representation, Construction procedures and security, Urban planning, Land transformation and perception, History of architecture, Landscape design, Hydraulics, Geological impacts, Architectural and Engineering design, Energy saving, Structural and Technical physics, Industrial design, Environment and land sociology and Legal studies - are all connected with the sustainable construction in the Mediterranean region.

The magazine will provide cultural and information exchange between researchers, professionals, scientists, technicians as far as the achievement in the field of their actions and studies are concerned. Joined with the acceptance of the paper, the specific template, according to which the final version of the paper should be edited, could be downloaded by the authors from the SMC platform.