Landscape: It may conjure images of endless rolling hills and majestic forests, but a landscape is simply an area of land that is heterogeneous (dissimilar) in one aspect, such as land type or elevation.
Ecology: Used loosely, ecology is the study of the interaction of organisms and their nonliving environment.
Using these definitions we can describe landscape ecology as a science that examines the appearance and patterns of land as a result of the interactions with its ecosystems.
Landscape ecologists use a wide vocabulary to discuss the patterns that they try to analyze. Some examples include:
- Configuration: The arrangement of elements
- Connectivity: Continuity of a habitat across a landscape
- Fragmentation: The breakup of a landscape in to patches or spots
- Patch: An area that differs in some way from the surrounding landscape
Geography and Landscape Ecology
Landscape ecology is closely related to geography because it stresses spatial patterns, or patterns over an expanse of land. Where do grasshoppers live? Are honey suckle plants more likely to appear near water? How is climate change affecting the habitats of maple trees? All of these are questions that landscape ecology attempts to answer.Important to the field is the idea of scale, another concept crucial to geography. When researchers address a particular problem they must decide at what scale to conduct a study. A broad scale would be used to look at interactions across continents or countries. A fine scale could be used to study interactions across counties, or in individual forests.
Scale can also be used to refer to time, known as temporal scale. Often times landscape ecologists examine areas over an extended period of time. For example, if a researcher were studying the impacts of temperature on tulip growth they might use a broad temporal scale and compare samples over multiple decades. Alternatively, a fine scale might be used to compare tulip samples over the months in a year.
Tools of Landscape Ecology
Landscape ecology uses many tools that aid in the visual and statistical analysis of spatial patterns across a stretch of land. The following is a list of various tools that landscape ecologists use:
- Models: a model is an abstract representation of a particular system, process, or occurrence. The models in this field can be physical, verbal, or mathematical. The most complicated and perhaps most useful to landscape ecologists are mathematical models that are based on complex formulas. In order to simplify very complex systems of relationships, mathematical models predict and explain patterns and phenomena.
- Remote Sensing: Very simply remote sensing is the gathering of information without physically contacting with the object of study. Photographic, optical, thermal, and microwave are the most common types. The main purpose of this tool is to understand spatial patterns by the differences in reflectance values of subjects.
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS): GIS uses software to compare layers of spatial information and can run analysis on patterns and other data. Often the information gathered from remote sensing can be converted and provide the data input for GIS.
Uses of Landscape Ecology
There are a wide variety of problems that landscape ecology can address, ranging from the effects of global climate change to the management of forests for species conservation. The demand for ecosystem analysis is growing rapidly as information gathering and analysis options are increasing.The identification and analysis of land use is one area that landscape ecology focuses. Human use of land in the form of agriculture and urban development plays a vital role in the interactions of landscape and ecosystems. How land is used may effect the migration of certain animal species as well as what land will be available for future use.
Forest management is also a field that landscape ecologists study. The use of the tools listed above have greatly aided in the documentation of forest growth and decline across many areas of the world. Many models have been constructed to predict where forests could migrate as a result of climate change and human encroachment. Landscape ecology has also helped forest managers decide how to use prescribed burns to help certain tree species survive.
Invasive species is also a concern of landscape ecology. Using mathematical models, remote sensing, and GIS, researchers are able to predict where invasive species such as the emerald ash borer, Asian long-horned beetle, or honey suckle are most likely to appear next. Generally, landscape ecology gives environment managers and administrators the information necessary to formulate effective environmental policies and programs.
