Naveh and Lieberman and Naveh proposed the holistic, eco-centric concept of the Total Human Ecosystem in order to study the anthropocene ecology and improve land use planning and environmental management, within an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. This concept integrates human systems and natural systems and their total environment at the highest co-evolutionary complexity level of the global ecological hierarchy. Naveh defines the concept of Total Human Ecosystem as "integrating humans with all other organisms and their total environment at the highest level of the global hierarchy". Zev Naveh was Professor in landscape ecology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. Until 1965 he worked as a range and pasture specialist in Israel and Tanzania. His research at the Technion was devoted to human impacts on Mediterranean landscapes, fire ecology and dynamic conservation management, and the introduction of drought resistant plants for multi-beneficial landscape restoration and beautification. Almo Farina is Professor of Ecology at the Urbino University, Faculty of Environmental Sciences.
The interaction and co-evolution of the human and natural ecosystem interactions are the driving forces for the current Earth System. The Total Human Ecosystem meta-conceptional approach have to integrate the bio-and geo-centric approaches, derived from the natural sciences, and the approaches derived from the social sciences and the humanities in order to prevent further environmental degradation and drive natural and human systems towards a sustainable future. A natural ecosystem within this concept is solar- energy powered, self-organizing and self-creating. A human ecosystem is fossil energy powered by high input and throughput and can be divided in urban-industrial ecosystem or agro-industrial. The ecosystem is realised in space as ecotope and the system of ecotopes is the landscape: natural, semi-natural, urban-industrial are the tangible, three-dimensional physical systems of our Total Human Ecosystem. The THE also consists of the domain of information, perceptions, Farina and Belgrano, 2004 knowledge, feeling and consciousness, enabling human self-awareness. A special case of landscapes inside of the Total Human Ecosystem are the cultural landscapes, in which the relationships between human activity and the environment have created ecological, socioeconomic and cultural patterns and feedbackmechanisms that preserve biological and cultural diversity and maintain ecosystem resilience and resistance.
