Ecology and landscape ecology in Italy have long maintained a reciprocal, mutually fertilizing exchange of ideas, each field enriching the other through continuous conceptual and methodological dialogue. Over the past decades, landscape ecology has introduced spatially explicit perspectives, innovative analytical frameworks, and a focus on patterns, processes, and scale that have broadened ecological interpretation of habitat mosaics, connectivity, and fragmentation, while providing a strong theoretical impulse to reflect on the role of disturbances and on the importance of emergent properties in complex ecological systems. At the same time, the field benefited from the solid scientific foundations of ecology, assimilating rigorous experimental approaches, quantitative methods, and theory-driven frameworks that strengthened its analytical robustness. This reciprocal exchange fostered a fertile scientific dialogue, enabling Italian researchers to integrate biophysical processes, landscape patterns, and socio ecological interactions within a coherent interpretative system.

Today, however, new challenges require an updated and transdisciplinary perspective. The advent of the Anthropocene forces both ecology and landscape ecology to confront unprecedented magnitudes and velocities of environmental change, encompassing biodiversity loss, disruptions to biogeochemical cycles, and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events. Managing Italian landscapes today requires approaches capable of addressing the cascading effects of the environmental crisis while integrating advanced technologies—such as drones, environmental DNA, big data infrastructure, and artificial intelligence—to monitor, model, and interpret complex ecological dynamics. These tools offer transformative opportunities but also require careful methodological (and sometimes ethical) handling.

From an applied perspective, the scientific community is increasingly called upon to support the implementation of the National Nature Restoration Plan by translating ecological and landscape ecology knowledge into effective restoration interventions, land management actions, and long-term monitoring strategies. In this context, the synergy between ecology and landscape ecology becomes fundamental to guiding Italy toward resilient, biodiverse, and sustainable landscapes.