Why is the holistic approach becoming so important in landscape ecology?

Landscape ecology is a way of thinking about the evolution and dynamics of heterogeneous landscapes. It is also viewed as the body of knowledge or facts about ecological space, spatial heterogeneity, and scaling. Studies in this field have been dominated by taking things apart and characterizing various attributes of spatial patterns. These studies generally do not address the intrinsic causality and underlying dynamics of the pattern. Therefore, they cannot explain why patterns change with biotic and abiotic conditions. The time is ripe for change; a holistic approach is needed. In this paper, I begin with mathematical formulation of the part–whole relation in ecological systems and show analytically why the ecological system cannot be understood by reducing it to its parts, which is the central theme for all holistic approaches. Using Prigogine’s self-organization theory and Haken’s synergetics, I further illustrate sufficiency and necessity of such a holistic approach to study how the cooperation of these subsystems of landscape brings about spatial, temporal and functional structures on macroscopic scales. Four fundamental principles that may govern these processes of self-organization of landscape are proposed. Several examples of applying this approach to theoretical and practical landscape problems are also given.