Ecosemiotic Landscape
A Novel Perspective for the Toolbox of Environmental Humanities

Complexity, uncertainty and information analysed in the domain of landscape using tools for ecosemiotics under the perspective of resources.

Almo Farina (Author)

9781108819374, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 February 2021

75 pages
15 x 23 x 0.5 cm, 0.12 kg

The distinction between humans and the natural world is an artefact and more a matter of linguistic communication than a conceptual separation. This Element proposes ecosemiotics as an epistemological tool to better understand the relationship between human and natural processes. Ecosemiotics with its affinity to the humanities, is presented here as the best disciplinary approach for interpreting complex environmental conditions for a broad audience, across a multitude of temporal and spatial scales. It is proposed as an intellectual bridge between divergent sciences to incorporate within a unique framework different paradigms. The ecosemiotic paradigm helps to explain how organisms interact with their external environments using mechanisms common to all living beings that capture external information and matter for internal usage. This paradigm can be applied in all the circumstances where a living being (man, animal, plant, fungi, etc.) performs processes to stay alive.

1. Introduction
2. Environmental complexity: an ecosemiotic vision
3. Environmental uncertainty: contrasting strategies and species adaptation
4. Information theory and meaning
5. The role of ecology in the ecosemiotic arena
6. Landscape dimension: some relevant characteristics of landscape
7. Resources: a general theory
8. An ecosemiotic approach to landscape description and interpretation: from zoosemiotics to an eco-field model
9. Fundamentals of ecoacoustics: a new quantitative contribution to the ecosemiotic narrative
10. Cultural landscapes.

Subject Areas: Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], Physical anthropology [JHMP], Society & culture: general [JF], Humanities [H]