Overview

In 2022, the next European Landscape Ecology Congress will take place. The IALE2022 Congress is IALE2021+1, originally scheduled in 2021 but postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The IALE congresses always have been opportunities to meet, discuss and interact with the wide and diverse field of landscape ecologists of all ages and research interests. But the congresses are also moments to meet your colleagues, to become part of the landscape ecology community. Therefore we wanted to organise a physical congress, where we have opportunities to meet in real life with each other and the landscapes. When it looked as though there was a chance to meet safely, war broke out at our borders. The war that shocks the world and with each passing day increases the unimaginable suffering of Ukrainians and the destruction of their homeland. Considering the dangers of the Russian invasion, the uncertainty of tomorrow and the obvious need to help millions of refugees arriving in Poland, we regretfully decided to change the format of the Congress to an online meeting. Although we are aware that some advantages of face-to-face meetings cannot be fully maintained, we will do our best to make the Congress interesting, interactive and valuable for everyone.

The next IALE European Landscape Ecology Congress aims to highlight landscape ecology as the transdisciplinary platform linking past, present and future. This approach is especially needed now when the world is facing global challenges such as climate crisis, biodiversity loss, environmental pollution, mass migration and urbanization. A holistic, landscape approach to the complex cultural-environmental systems – which is the essence of landscape ecology – provides the perfect framework for combining trans disciplinary tools and perspectives to better understand the diverse phenomena and processes around us and to predict and properly manage them. That is why we want to learn from past experience and knowledge to take responsibility for shaping sustainable landscapes and societies of the future.

To achieve this aim we invite both researchers and practitioners from all landscape-related disciplines, including environmental and social perspectives, to share their experience and interact within the broad, international community of all those interested in landscape related issues. We believe that landscape ecology – as the study of multifaceted interactions in geographical space – has the potential to integrate not only natural sciences and humanities but also researchers and policy-makers, which is the key to implement the Congress theme into practice.

The IALE 2022 European Landscape Ecology Congress is organised by Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences (IGiPZ PAN) and Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw (WGiSR UW) in partnership with European and Polish Associations for Landscape Ecology (IALE-Europe and PAEK).