Summary
There is an increasing acceptance that sectorial approaches to land management are no longer sufficient to meet global challenges such as poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and food production. The pressing challenge of integrated landscape management is to link agricultural practices, institutions and policies with other landscape-scale activities. “Integrated Landscape Approaches” provide a basic framework for balancing competing demands and integrating policies for multiple land uses within a given area. However, attempts to formalize and characterize what landscape approaches actually represent have resulted in a plethora of interlinked terminology and re-invention of ideas and practices under multiple guises. This has led to delayed uptake amongst policy makers and resistance to implementation on the ground. This protocol describes the methodology to be employed for a systematic map that will chart the development of the landscape approach theory, consolidate and synthesize existing definitions, and identify where and how these approaches have been implemented in the humid and dry tropics.