Coevolutionary aesthetics in human and biotic artworlds

This work proposes a coevolutionary theory of aesthetics that encompasses both biotic and human arts. Anthropocentric perspectives in aesthetics prevent the recognition of the ontological complexity of the aesthetics of nature, and the aesthetic agency of many non-human organisms. The process of evaluative coevolution is shared by all biotic advertisements. I propose that art consists of a form of communication that coevolves with its own evaluation. Art and art history are population phenomena. I expand Arthur Danto’s Artworld concept to any aesthetic population of producers and evaluators. Current concepts of art cannot exclusively circumscribe the human arts from many forms of non-human biotic art. Without assuming an arbitrarily anthropocentric perspective, any concept of art will need to engage with biodiversity, and either recognize many instances of biotic advertisements as art, or exclude some instances of human art. Coevolutionary aesthetic theory provides a heuristic account of aesthetic change in both human and biotic artworlds, including the coevolutionary origin of aesthetic properties and aesthetic value within artworlds. Restructuring aesthetics, art criticism, and art history without human beings at the organizing centers of these disciplines stimulate new progress in our understanding of art, and the unique human contributions to aesthetics and aesthetic diversity.     

以生态景观构建乡村审美空间

乡村审美空间表层是非功利的,实质深层映射出人地关系本质的取向价值,是人地关系永久可持续发展问题。目前乡村研究多注重经济和土地利用,而以现实生态景观构建乡村审美空间还是有待于探讨的重要课题。近年来快速城市化发展,区域中的自然地理性质破坏对于乡村景观是致命的。立足地理生态环境架构乡村审美空间,分析乡村生态景观和审美空间对应的元素,以多尺度景观层面探寻表现在与之相映的景观空间形态结构、格局演化进程与机理响应,进而构建审美空间,组合形成现实的美丽景观体系。将生态文明和社会发展要求安排在景观空间格局配置的中,形成保持整体环境的景观网络。使得风景美的概念渗透在于城镇、乡村以至农田等更广阔的领域,从而建设具有风景画境界的"美丽乡村"。     

生态系统服务视角下的景观美学研究进展

美学是生态系统服务的重要研究内容之一,从美和美学的本质入手去探讨景观美学的概念和范围,明确了景观美学的研究内容,确定景观审美和审美主体与客体之间对立统一的辩证关系,总结景观美学的传统研究方法,如问卷调查法、美景度法、语义差异法、层次分析法等。但是人对景观的主观感知一直都采用的是模糊评价法,用于评估和监测景观美学的标准化方法仍然没有统一的标准,更无法在大尺度上进行景观评价和对比分析。而人在欣赏美景后形成的物理感知和情感反应是自然而然的,个体之间虽有差异,但在生理反应和神经感知指标上应有客观反映。脑科学技术与神经学技术的发展为测量人的主观感受和情感提供了新的思路,如脑电EEG,皮肤电导率和眼睛跟踪等新的技术给景观美学的研究打开了全新的视角。因此总结了脑科学和神经科学在景观相关领域的应用,指出了景观美学研究面临的机遇和挑战。同时提出景观美学的价值和前景,也为其他领域中的美学研究提供新的思路。     

生态美学视角下宁夏贺兰山国家级自然保护区视觉景观特征评估

景观美学的理论维度已从风景美学延伸至生态美学,为促进生态美学理论在客观法和空间水平上向"数字化+可视化"发展,以宁夏贺兰山国家级自然保护区为例,创新性地提出了利用地理要素构建分类的数字景观模型并借用基于景观生态学的景观格局指数进行视觉景观特征评估的研究框架。在筛选地貌（自然和垂直要素）和土地利用（文化和水平要素）景观要素的基础上,构建了一套景观分类指标体系;通过GIS进行空间叠加分析,识别了研究区域中的440种景观斑块和类型,以此作为视觉景观特征评估的基本单元;基于生态美学理论,构建了视觉景观多样性、自然性和独特性3个视觉景观特征评估指标,借用景观格局指数进行度量并通过FRAGSTATs与GIS可视化;通过SPCA分析得到权重后绘制了视觉景观特征综合评估的空间分布。结果显示,诸多相互作用的景观要素"聚集"在一起产生了不同水平的视觉景观特征,与低水平视觉景观特征有关的景观类型在要素组成上较为复杂,而与高水平视觉景观特征有关的景观类型主要与坡度适中的东南向山谷地貌与荒草地、未成林封育地和乔木林等土地利用的共同作用有关。研究认为,可视化的视觉景观特征评估结果有助于识别需得到保护修复、规划利用及管理协调的景观斑块或类型,有利于增加保护地整体的生态美学价值。     

Science and craftsmanship: the art of experiment and instrument making

In his two-volume monograph Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricit?t, the Berlin physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond described the relation between nervous electricity and muscle mechanics by way of a long series of experiments. This work is a key text in the history of the experimental life sciences. But it not only contains new findings about the functioning of muscles and its nerves. Du Bois-Reymond practiced an art of experimentation in which aesthetics of mechanical craftsmanship allied itself with the science of physiology. Experimentation, as du Bois-Reymond understood it, was simultaneously an epistemic and an aesthetic practice. The goal of his science was thus producing both knowledge and aesthetic success.     

景观资源美学评价的理论与方法

随着自然环境的不断破坏,景观已经不再是取之不尽,用之不竭的资源,人类开始把它放到与其它资源同等重要的战略地位.景观资源评价是其可持续利用和保护的前提.在论述美学、审美及景观内涵的基础上,阐述了审美心理学机制和审美途径,比较了传统与现代景观审美研究的方法,讨论了景观审美的重要理论(如柏拉图主义、康德学说、移情论、格式塔学派、马克思美学理论、Appleton理论),研究了景观评价方法的四大学派两大阵营(专家学派、心理物理学派、认知学派、经验学派、景观环境科学及景园文化),分析了国内外景观评价的成功实践.研究表明,景观评价历史发展以专家学派与感知学派竞争为特色,专家学派在景观管理中居于主导地位,而心理感知学派在研究领域处于支配地位,它们都认为景观质量决定于景观生物物理特性与人的感知判断;未来的景观资源评价仍表现出专家学派和感知学派共同主导、各自探索的特点;景观资源信息化与视觉时空动态模拟将冲击传统景观评价,而现代科技的发展将帮助迎接这些挑战.作者提出了21世纪景观评价的新特征: ①学派兼容并蓄,不断走向融合;②多学科交叉,注重量化评价;③强调环境信息,重视生态价值;④现代科技普遍应用,景观信息动态智能化;⑤景观模拟逼真化,主观感受现场化;⑥关注历史内涵,景观文化地位上升.     

A gray matter of taste: Sound perception, music cognition, and Baumgarten's aesthetics

Music is an ancient and ubiquitous form of human expression. One important component for which music is sought after is its aesthetic value, whose appreciation has typically been associated with largely learned, culturally determined factors, such as education, exposure, and social pressure. However, neuroscientific evidence shows that the aesthetic response to music is often associated with automatic, physically- and biologically-grounded events, such as shivers, chills, increased heart rate, and motor synchronization, suggesting the existence of an underlying biological platform upon which contextual factors may act. Drawing on philosophical notions and neuroscientific evidence, I argue that, although there is no denying that social and cultural context play a substantial role in shaping the aesthetic response to music, these act upon largely universal, biological mechanisms involved with neural processing. I propose that the simultaneous presence of culturally-influenced and biologically-determined contributions to the aesthetic response to music epitomizes Baumgarten's equation of sensory perception with taste. Taking the argument one step further, I suggest that the heavily embodied aesthetic response to music bridges the cleavage between the two discrepant meanings-the one referring to sensory perception, the other referring to judgments of taste-traditionally attributed to the word "aesthetics" in the sciences and the humanities.     

Undefining art: Irrelevant categorization in the anthropology of aesthetics

Conclusion: What is to be done with the concept of art? What, then, does one do with the concept of art? I suggest that we simply drop it. The fact is, there is no such thing as art. That is, there is no such thing as art in itself. Art in itself is not a universal human phenomenon, but a synthetic Western category, and a relatively recent one at that. The concept has generated endlessly misleading ethnography, art history, and esthetic theory, and has acted mainly to mystify the social conditions which keep acts of creation and sensual pleasure out of the experience of the socially exploited majority. I suggest that those acts and products which we have been calling art simply be returned to the domain of labor, or better, work. Work, in that sense, is the application of human energy to matter, and the consequent production and reforming of that matter in new forms. Work is human making, culture creating. Verum factum. For humans, that which is true or real is that which is made; the very basis of humanity is the drive to transform the socio-natural world through the imaginative application of work.In making, a person may at almost anytime exercise the human aesthetic faculties, that is, he or she strives to get pleasure, formal or sensual, from the making, and to give a similar formal or sensual pleasure to other people who will perceive that which is made [46]. In this sense, the Pakot have a more fruitful and probably more accurate definition of the aesthetic process than we have. One makes things, and where one can, one makes them beautiful, pleasing to the senses and to the apprehension of form. So — one throws a spear and throws it with a smooth flow and sharp snap beyond what is necessary to the kill. One makes a garden and lays it in rows, with an eye to varied heights and colors and textures. One paints a wall and lays on figures as well as color. One dances to honor the gods, and also takes pleasure in the blending of body and music. Most elementally, and most poignantly, one makes a social self and concomitantly makes it as aesthetically pleasing as one can; the Nuba, for example, in marking their bodies with the signs of the appropriate patriclan, physiological condition and ritual status, also make their bodies objects of beauty [47] and therefore, for them, specifically human. A Tikopia man [48], in making and using a headrest is at once differentiating himself from women, stating and preserving the sacredness of his head, and taking and making pleasure in something beautiful. My point is precisely that abstract beauty is not at the core of art. One makes, and sometimes the thing made, or a part of it, is beautiful and sometimes the thing, or any part of it, is not. The beautiful things do not cluster together into a significant category. The made things do; they are the emergent, constituted human products of human labor.Let us say, further, that I make a picture of a fountain in Galicia, to give to a friend who has lived there. The given or, better, the series of givens, include the appearance of the fountain, the state of my relationship with my friend, my paints and paper, and my complex and ambivalent feelings about Galicia. I am making: a gift, a statement of my affection for the friend, a concretization of my feeling for Galicia, an affirmation about myself as a friend and as a maker of beautiful things, a picture of a fountain, and a pleasing arrangement of lines and colors. In making my picture, I am doing nothing fundamentally different from that which the potter making a pot, the housewife cooking a meal, the farmer planting a field is doing. I am taking a given and by my work transforming it into a new reality so designed that it gives sensual pleasure in a new context. The great danger is that of mystification, of calling art, as Mills [49] does, a sacrament, in which the artist controls, while creating, the conditions of qualitative experience. Such a position both magnifies and diminishes the real actions of real artists, whose conceptual and material artifacts are drawn from the experienced world. The material-social world is changed by the artist (that is, everyone) and the artist is changed by it; the result of the dialectical relation between actor-artist and cultural given is a new world, a synthesis, a new context, with the two components (the human actor-subject and the nature-culture object) in a new relationship to each other.When work is such that it no longer transforms the given world, where it is no longer directed by the imagination and by the creatively constituted needs of the human worker, where it acts only to reinforce a stultifying status quo, it has become a less than human action. A man on a General Motors assembly line is not applying his imagination to alter the world in consonance with emergent human possibilities; he is simply reinforcing the current state of affairs. The painter making a picture that will sell in an art gallery and gain him a small income and a place in the catalogue of Contemporary American Artists, is in much the same situation; put to the service of something called Art, his skill is failing to transform the world or even his perception of it in any meaningful way.Our primary, over-arching category, then, should be work, and is is this on which we should be focusing for both our ethmography and our theory. Such an un-defining, or disalienation of art, has a number of advantages. It changes our understanding of human effort by allowing for the possibility that work may be both creative and pleasurable — (hardly a new point), and yet a consideration rarely in the minds of ethnographers studying people at work. Surely it would help to get rid of those superfluous, half-hearted, and pen-ultimate chapters on art in most anthropology textbooks, and describe aesthetic activities in the same way they are actually integrated into people's lives. More to the point, the nondefinition of art can contribute to the demystification of aesthetics in our own society. In recognizing that art is not separate from life and is indeed simply a form of work, that ordinary people (that is, those not labeled artists) are doing something not basically different from that which artists are doing, we can encourage the laymen, the non-artists to take more legitimate pleasure in their activities and to reclaim for themselves the right to make their work pleasurable and beautiful. We might, simultaneously, help the socially proclaimed artists to drop the illusion, which is shared in our civilization at large, that they are indeed a special class, higher than, and hence unaccountable to society. Indeed, it is precisely that illusion which, paradoxically, privileges the artist, while isolating him and his activities as a convenient object of repression; the artist becomes a symbol of everyman's potential challenge to the civilized order, the unwitting assumption being that everyman is potentially an artist.I suggest, then, that we define art along with Rousseau in his widely misunderstood First Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, by undefining it, that we in reality, acknowledge it by denying its reified existence. By assuming that there is a class of activities and consequent products which pertain to special areas of life and to privileged people, we have denied the exercise of the aesthetic faculties to the majority of people. We may now help to undo that repressive assumption-action, and acknowledge and thus foster the unity, in human work, of making, creating, and beautifying.This is, of course, a political position, not political in the sense of insisting that architecture or painting or poetry serve overtly propagandistic, or even ideologically explicit revolutionary ends, but it is political in the insistence that the exercise of the aesthetic faculties is a human imperative and a human right. Any society, cultural order, or set of definitions which acts toward denying that right is destructive and de-humanizing. With that acknowledgement, the anthropology of aesthetics begins.Toni Flores Fratto is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York.     

When Challenging Art Gets Liked: Evidences for a Dual Preference Formation Process for Fluent and Non-Fluent Portraits

Although fluency theory predominates psychological research on human aesthetics, its most severe limitation may be to explain why art that challenges or even violates easy processing can nevertheless be aesthetically rewarding. We discuss long-standing notions on art’s potential to offer mental growth opportunities and to tap into a basic epistemic predisposition that hint at a fluency counteracting aesthetic pleasure mechanism. Based on divergent strands of literature on empirical, evolutionary, and philosophical aesthetics, as well as research on disfluency, we presumed that challenging art requires deliberate reflexive processing at the level of “aboutness” in order to be experientially pleasing. Here, we probed such a cognitive mastering mechanism, achieved by iterative cycles of elaboration, as predicted by our model of aesthetic experiences. For the study, two kinds of portraits were applied, one associable to a high fluency and one to a high stimulation potential (according to results of an extensive rating study). In Experiment 1, we provided a repeated evaluation task, which revealed a distinctive preference effect for challenging portraits that was absent in the visual exposition conditions of a familiarity and a mere exposure task (Experiment 2). In a follow-up task (Experiment 3) this preference effect was observed with a novel and more encompassing pool of portraits, which corroborated its stability and robustness. In an explorative stimulus-transfer task (Experiment 4), we investigated the presumed underlying mechanism by testing whether the observed effect would generalize onto novel portraits of the same artist-specific styles. Results discounted an alternative interpretation of a perceptual adaptation effect and hinted at meaning-driven mental activity. Conjointly, findings for inexperienced viewers were indicative of an elaboration based mastering mechanism that selectively operated for mentally challenging portraits. Moreover, findings were in line with a dual-process view of human preference formation with art. Theoretical implications and boundary conditions are discussed.     

The Art of Indigeneity: Aesthetics and Competition in Mexican Economies of Culture

On the basis of ethnographic research with woodcarvers in Oaxaca, Mexico, this paper investigates the role that aesthetic practices play in economic competition in cultural markets. I explain how one family has become the most successful artisans in their village by aesthetically referencing the indigenous art that is highly sought after by the North American ethnic art market. By reformulating Bourdieu's analysis of artistic fields, I argue that aesthetic competition should be theorised at the level of genres, which allow insight into how individual aesthetic innovations may transform the fields in which art is produced and circulated. I show that by referencing indigeneity, this successful family not only accesses a new market but also renders their work more authoritative than the carvings of their neighbours, which aesthetically reference Mexican ‘artesanías’ (craftwork). In so doing, they not only earn more money but also change the ways that Oaxacan woodcarvings are valued in general.     

Ellen Dissanayake’s Evolutionary Aesthetic

Dissanayake argues that art behaviors – which she characterizes first as patterns or syndromes of creation and response and later as rhythms and modes of mutuality – are universal, innate, old, and a source of intrinsic pleasure, these being hallmarks of biological adaptation. Art behaviors proved to enhance survival by reinforcing cooperation, interdependence, and community, and, hence, became selected for at the genetic level. Indeed, she claims that art is essential to the fullest realization of our human nature. I make three criticisms: Dissanayake’s theory cannot account adequately for differences in the aesthetic value of artworks; the connections drawn between art and reproductive success are too stretched to account for art's production, nature, and reception; indeed, art enters the picture only because it is so thinly characterized that it remains in doubt that her topic is art as we understand it.     

Combining Aesthetic with Ecological Values for Landscape Sustainability

Humans receive multiple benefits from various landscapes that foster ecological services and aesthetic attractiveness. In this study, a hybrid framework was proposed to evaluate ecological and aesthetic values of five landscape types in Houguanhu Region of central China. Data from the public aesthetic survey and professional ecological assessment were converted into a two-dimensional coordinate system and distribution maps of landscape values. Results showed that natural landscapes (i.e. water body and forest) contributed positively more to both aesthetic and ecological values than semi-natural and human-dominated landscapes (i.e. farmland and non-ecological land). The distribution maps of landscape values indicated that the aesthetic, ecological and integrated landscape values were significantly associated with landscape attributes and human activity intensity. To combine aesthetic preferences with ecological services, the methods (i.e. field survey, landscape value coefficients, normalized method, a two-dimensional coordinate system, and landscape value distribution maps) were employed in landscape assessment. Our results could facilitate to identify the underlying structure-function-value chain, and also improve the understanding of multiple functions in landscape planning. The situation context could also be emphasized to bring ecological and aesthetic goals into better alignment.     

Aesthetic preference recognition of 3D shapes using EEG

Recognition and identification of aesthetic preference is indispensable in industrial design. Humans tend to pursue products with aesthetic values and make buying decisions based on their aesthetic preferences. The existence of neuromarketing is to understand consumer responses toward marketing stimuli by using imaging techniques and recognition of physiological parameters. Numerous studies have been done to understand the relationship between human, art and aesthetics. In this paper, we present a novel preference-based measurement of user aesthetics using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for virtual 3D shapes with motion. The 3D shapes are designed to appear like bracelets, which is generated by using the Gielis superformula. EEG signals were collected by using a medical grade device, the B-Alert X10 from advance brain monitoring, with a sampling frequency of 256 Hz and resolution of 16 bits. The signals obtained when viewing 3D bracelet shapes were decomposed into alpha, beta, theta, gamma and delta rhythm by using time–frequency analysis, then classified into two classes, namely like and dislike by using support vector machines and K-nearest neighbors (KNN) classifiers respectively. Classification accuracy of up to 80 % was obtained by using KNN with the alpha, theta and delta rhythms as the features extracted from frontal channels, Fz, F3 and F4 to classify two classes, like and dislike.     

丽江城市不同区域景观美学

我国正处在快速城市化阶段,古城或古镇正面临城市化和旅游业的双重压力,古城风貌和景观美学受到影响。以世界文化遗产丽江古城所在地——丽江盆地为研究对象,按照大研古镇-丽江新城-郊区的梯度设置评价样点,采用评分法(SBE-Scenic beauty estimation procedure)进行景观美学评价。结果显示:参加评价的男性与女性显示出性别间的细小差异,两个曲线的趋势基本一致,其中最大值和最小值均由男性评价者产生。丽江古城的三大古镇中,束河古镇的景观美学评价值最高,为6.79,白沙古镇的景观美学评价值为5.82,大研古镇景观美学评价值为5.68。大研古镇与丽江新城交错带的景观美学评价均值为4.9,丽江新城区的平均值均值为4.03,玉龙县城的均值为3.88,评价分值最低点在玉龙新县城,为2.36。在世界文化遗产核心区大研古镇到郊区的梯度上,整个评价曲线呈V型,中间低,两边高的趋势,大研古镇与城市新区交错带的景观美学评价值较低。景观美学评分较高的景观要素包括:自然景观(山体、水体)、农田、古镇、有历史文化特色和地方民族特色的景观等,现代城市景观的评价值较低。研究结果对保护丽江古城具有重要意义,可以用来完善丽江城市景观规划、优化城市空间格局,在城市建设发展的同时,保护好丽江的古城风貌和田园风光,以维系景观美学价值。     

Brain intersections of aesthetics and morals: perspectives from biology, neuroscience, and evolution

For centuries, only philosophers debated the relationship between aesthetics and morality. Recently, with advances in neuroscience, the debate has moved to include the brain and an evolved neural underpinning linking aesthetic reactions and moral judgment. Biological survival emphasizes mate selection strategies, and the ritual displays have been linked to human aesthetics in the arts, in faces, and in various daily decision making. In parallel, cultural human practices have evolved to emphasize altruism and morality. This article explores the biological background and discusses the neuroscientific evidence for shared brain pathways for aesthetics and morals.     

基于景感生态学认知的生态环境损害问题辨析

环境污染和生态破坏行为削弱生态系统服务,也会造成美学价值的下降。景感生态学从物理感知与心理认知出发探究生态系统服务特点,有助于剖析生态环境损害特征。从生态环境损害鉴定评估角度,结合案例对恶臭物质污染、噪声污染、光污染等生态环境损害问题的内涵进行分析,并对生态环境损害典型案例中造成的美感、视觉、听觉、味觉、嗅觉、触觉、风感、方向感和心理反应等负面影响进行了研判。研究发现,大多生态环境损害行为都会破坏生态系统美学价值,给人类感知造成较大冲击;在发现和处理生态环境损害事件过程中,按照人类感知类型汇集的居民感觉信息是一种重要的数据来源。总之,采用景感生态学的研究方法既有利于加强人们对生态系统服务的理解,从而提升保护生态的动力,也有利于抵制生态环境损害行为。     

Exploring Responses to Art in Adolescence: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study

Adolescence is a peculiar age mainly characterized by physical and psychological changes that may affect the perception of one''s own and others'' body. This perceptual peculiarity may influence the way in which bottom-up and top-down processes interact and, consequently, the perception and evaluation of art. This study is aimed at investigating, by means of the eye-tracking technique, the visual explorative behavior of adolescents while looking at paintings. Sixteen color paintings, categorized as dynamic and static, were presented to twenty adolescents; half of the images represented natural environments and half human individuals; all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment tasks. Participants'' ratings revealed that, generally, nature images are explicitly evaluated as more appealing than human images. Eye movement data, on the other hand, showed that the human body exerts a strong power in orienting and attracting visual attention and that, in adolescence, it plays a fundamental role during aesthetic experience. In particular, adolescents seem to approach human-content images by giving priority to elements calling forth movement and action, supporting the embodiment theory of aesthetic perception.     

Cultural ecosystem services of mountain regions: Modelling the aesthetic value

Mountain regions meet an increasing demand for pleasant landscapes, offering many cultural ecosystem services to both their residents and tourists. As a result of global change, land managers and policy makers are faced with changes to this landscape and need efficient evaluation techniques to assess cultural ecosystem services. This study provides a spatially explicit modelling approach to estimating aesthetic landscape values by relating spatial landscape patterns to human perceptions via a photo-based survey. The respondents attributed higher aesthetic values to the Alpine landscape in respect to areas with settlements, infrastructure or intensive agricultural use. The aesthetic value of two study areas in the Central Alps (Stubai Valley, Austria and Vinschgau, Italy) was modelled for 10,215 viewpoints along hiking trails according to current land cover and a scenario considering the spontaneous reforestation of abandoned land. Viewpoints with high aesthetic values were mainly located at high altitude, allowing long vistas, and included views of lakes or glaciers, and the lowest values were for viewpoints close to streets and in narrow valleys with little view. The aesthetic values of the reforestation scenario decreased mainly at higher altitudes, but the whole area was affected, reducing aesthetic value by almost 10% in Stubai Valley and 15% in Vinschgau. Our proposed modelling approach allows the estimation of aesthetic values in spatial and qualitative terms for most viewpoints in the European Alps. The resulting maps can be used as information and the basis for discussion by stakeholders, to support the decision-making process and landscape planning. This paper also discusses the role of mountain farming in preserving an attractive landscape and related cultural values.     

景观可持续性与景观可持续性科学

人类活动已经剧烈地改变了自然环境,全球气候变化、生物多样性丧失、环境污染等种种迹象表明当今世界正处在一个不可持续的运行轨迹上,实现可持续发展成为21世纪人类面临的巨大挑战。景观是理解与塑造人类社会和环境关系最具操作性的尺度,也是提供景观服务,实现人类福祉最重要的场所。景观可持续性研究对于人类具有重要意义。景观可持续性是指特定景观所具有的、能够长期而稳定地提供景观服务、维护和改善本区域人类福祉的综合能力。景观可持续性具有跨学科、多维度特征,强调景观弹性和可再生能力;景观服务是景观可持续性研究中的重要概念,它是连接自然资本与人类福祉的关键桥梁,也是将景观可持续性与景观生态学紧密联系在一起的纽带。格局-过程-设计新范式的产生是景观可持续性研究的新发展。在景观可持续性快速发展的同时,聚焦于景观和区域尺度的景观可持续性科学应运而生。景观可持续性科学以景观格局、景观服务、人类福祉三者之间的动态关系为主要研究内容,充分融合了景观生态学空间显示方法、可持续性指标体系和GISRS等方法技术,其理论框架和研究方法体系正在逐步形成和完善之中。景观可持续性科学是可持续性科学的重要组成部分,虽然处于刚刚起步阶段,它必将成为未来十多年可持续性科学的研究热点。