It includes scientific disciplines: agronomy, botany, ecology, forestry, geology, geochemistry, hydrogeology, and wildlife biology.
Its distinguishing feature is the marriage of landforms, substrates, and vegetation throughout all phases of design and construction, which previously have been kept as separate disciplines.
The iterative process of planning, design, and performance assessment by a multidisciplinary team is the basis of landscape engineering.
An example of contemporary landscape engineering and natural resources management related to the Biosphere 2 and seawater farming projects, is the IBTS Greenhouse, formerly the Forest City designed for the Emirate of Ras al Khaimah.
The Integrated Biotectural System is based on a wetland, more specifically a mangrove eco-system designed for food and fodder production of 80tons per hectare and year, also called mariculture.
The atmosphere inside the IBTS is turned into a potent water source and harvested with a combination of condensation utilities which makes it a more energy efficient desalination facility than industrial plants.
These numbers are important because the performance data of for-profit engineered landscapes like wetlands for wastewater treatment or agro-ecological farming sites distinguishes technically feasible from financially and ecologically beneficial projects.
The up-front and operational cost could thus be reduced so far that entire landscapes can be covered permanently, not in a common greenhouse fashion, but with an architectural structure that allows for a real-size forest and urban development below the Sky-roof.