Landscapes evolve in particular environments in response to the local social and environmental conditions. However elements may be copied from one country to another. ‘English landscape style’ can be found in Germany, just as British forestry adopted many German practices.

Professor Küster is one of Germany’s foremost ecological historians, author of, inter alia, Geschichte der Landschaft in Mitteleuropa (1995), Geschichte des Waldes (1998), Die Ostsee: Eine Natur- und Kulturgeschichte (2002), and Die Elbe: Landschaft und Geschichte (2007).