My theme is that when it comes to land-use research, planning, and management, there is a need to enlarge the frame of reference from the landscape to the region. Although the term “landscape” is often extended beyond the dictionary definition of “an expanse of scenery seen by the eye in one view” to include what can be distinguished in an aerial photo or satellite image, a landscape is also described by the interactions of different identifiable units (sometimes called ecotypes) on the land surface which are based upon ecological, social, and economic considerations (Turner, 1989; Turner et al., 1996). In terms of an absolute spatial scale, a landscape is a large geographic expanse encompassing anywhere from ten to several thousand square kilometers (Bailey, 1996). While the landscape perspective in ecology has enlarged the scale at which research is carried out, a more appropriate scale for addressing many land-use, land-tenure, and environmental problems is the region, which is the focus of this chapter.

In the 1930s, social scientists promoted the concept of regionalism in which social indicators were used to compare different geographical and political regions. This concept considered regions to be large geographic expanses (e.g., multiple counties, or multiple states) based primarily upon political or social boundaries (Odum, 1936). My father, Howard W. Odum, and his faculty and staff at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, were leaders in developing this field. His books Southern Regions (1936) and American Regionalism (Odum and Moore, 1938) were very influential in shaping the political scene of North Carolina, and the southern region of the United States as a whole.