The following definition is quoted from Monica Turner's Landscape Ecology Lab.
"Landscape ecology emphasizes the interaction between spatial pattern and ecological process -- that is, the causes and consequences of spatial heterogeneity across a range of scales. Two important aspects of landscape ecology distinguish it from other subdisciplines within ecology. First, landscape ecology explicitly addresses the importance of spatial configuration for ecological processes. Not only is landscape ecology concerned with how much there is of a particular component but also with how it is arranged. Second, landscape ecology often focuses upon spatial extents that are much larger than those traditionally studied in ecology. Landscape ecology offers new concepts, theory and methods that are revealing the importance of spatial patterning on the dynamics of interacting ecosystems."

Last update : 2003-02-26 03:50:17