From Biodiversity to Ecodiversity — Holistic Conservation of the Biological and Cultural Diversity of Mediterranean Landscapes

Human disturbance in mediterranean-type ecosystems continues to be a subject of serious concern, and nowhere is such disturbance and degradation of natural ecological processes and biodiversity more evident than in the Mediterranean Basin itself. In this chapter I will point out currently prevailing trends in Mediterranean landscapes in the context of our global environmental crisis. This will lead to a discussion of the close interrelations between biological diversity, ecological heterogeneity, and cultural diversity, or in one word, total landscape ecodiversity in the Mediterranean Basin, and to recent advances in landscape ecology in the evaluation of this issue. I will conclude by offering some new approaches and tools for holistic ecodiversity conservation as an integral part of the urgently needed environmental revolution.

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