This article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution is about purposely controlling spatial fragmentation in ecosystems in order to maximize ecosystem services. If I understand correctly, their hypothesis seems to be that a system that is fragmented in a carefully designed way could provide more ecosystem services than an unfragmented system.

Landscape structure and fragmentation have important effects on ecosystem services, with a common assumption being that fragmentation reduces service provision. This is based on fragmentation’s expected effects on ecosystem service supply, but ignores how fragmentation influences the flow of services to people. Here we develop a new conceptual framework that explicitly considers the links between landscape fragmentation, the supply of services, and the flow of services to people. We argue that fragmentation’s effects on ecosystem service flow can be positive or negative, and use our framework to construct testable hypotheses about the effects of fragmentation on final ecosystem service provision. Empirical efforts to apply and test this framework are critical to improving landscape management for multiple ecosystem services.

This idea is important to the idea that we could hypothetically design a civilization that is not only less bad than the one we have now, but one that is actually good for the planet and people.