Experimental landscape ecology

Experimentation in landscape ecology is widely conducted using diverse approaches to answer a broad range of questions. By assessing the response to controlled manipulations alternate hypotheses can be clearly refuted, model parameters quantified, and conditions are often ripe for unexpected insights. Results from landscape experiments complement the many well developed observational and modeling approaches more commonly used in landscape ecology. To better understand how landscape experimentation has been conducted and to identify future research directions, we reviewed and organized the diversity of experiments. We identified fifteen distinct landscape experiment types, which we categorized into four broad groups including (I) identifying landscape structure, (II) identifying how ecological processes vary within existing landscapes, (III) identifying how landscape structure influences ecological processes, and (IV) identifying landscape pattern formation factors. Experiment types vary along axes of scalable to real landscapes and generalizability, suitability for analysis through traditional experimental design and flexibility of experimental setup, and complexity of implementation and resource requirements. The next generation of experiments are benefiting from more explicit inclusion of scaling theories and tighter coupling between experiments and cyberinfrastructure. Future experimental opportunities for landscape ecologists include expanded collaborations among experiments, better representations of microbial-soil structure relationships at microscales, and direct evaluations of landscape interactions with global changes. The history, current practice, and future needs of landscape ecological research strongly support an expanded role of experimental approaches that complements the rich observational and modeling strengths of the field.     

Scaling of ‘landscapes’ in landscape ecology,or, landscape ecology from a beetle's perspective

Research performed on microlandscapes embodies the essence of landscape ecology by focusing on the ecological consequences of the mosaic structure of different landscape elements. As an illustration, observations and simulations were used to test whether the fractal structure of grassland microlandscapes affected the movement patterns of tenebrionid beeetles in natural environments. The significant tendency of beetles to avoid 1 m² cells with fractal dimensions of 1.85 to 1.89 (indicating the area-filling tendency of bare ground) demonstrated the role of landscape structure as a modifier of beetle movements or diffusion in heterogeneous landscapes. Experiments in microlandscapes may accelerate the development of quantitative conceptual frameworks applicable to landscapes at all scales.     

Introducing landscape ecology

Our new journal has been developed by SPB Academic Publishing cooperating with the International Association of Landscape Ecology (IALE), which is affiliated with the International Association for Ecology (INTECOL). IALE membership includes landscape designers, architects, and planners, as well as soil scientists, geographers, modellers, biogeographers, and those biologists who call themselves ecologists. The journal is intended to be the official voice of IALE and to represent these various disciplines' interests and research on the landscape. Landscape sets the scale and orientation of the journal. Ecology indicates its breadth and wholistic approach.A central task of the editor and editorial board is to set the boundaries of the subject matter contained in the journal. These boundaries will be fuzzy, like those in nature, and will shift with time.In this introductory comment, I want to repeat some of the ideas presented at the second meeting of the USA chapter of IALE, at Charlottesville, Virginia, USA on March 11, 1987. The comments seem as relevant at the birth of a new journal as at the close of a meeting of a newly organized landscape ecology society. My comments were divided into three parts: first, general, philosophical matters; second, space and time; and third, human interactions with the landscape.     

From landscape ecology to forest landscape restoration

Landscape Ecology - Forest landscape restoration (FLR) was first defined in 2000 and has emerged from several disciplines, including conservation biology and landscape ecology. As it has gained in...     

Spatial resilience: integrating landscape ecology,resilience, and sustainability

Landscape ecology has a high potential to contribute to sustainability in the interactions of people and nature. Landscape ecologists have already made considerable progress towards a more general understanding of the relevance of spatial variation for ecosystems. Incorporating the complexities of societies and economies into landscape ecology analyses will, however, require a broader framework for thinking about spatial elements of complexity. An exciting recent development is to explicitly try to integrate landscape ecology and ideas about resilience in social–ecological systems through the concept of spatial resilience. Spatial resilience focuses on the importance of location, connectivity, and context for resilience, based on the idea that spatial variation in patterns and processes at different scales both impacts and is impacted by local system resilience. I first introduce and define the concepts of resilience and spatial resilience and then discuss some of their potential contributions to the further interdisciplinary integration of landscape ecology, complexity theory, and sustainability science. Complexity theorists have argued that many complex phenomena, such as symmetry-breaking and selection, share common underlying mechanisms regardless of system type (physical, social, ecological, or economic). Similarities in the consequences of social exclusion and habitat fragmentation provide an informative example. There are many strong parallels between pattern–process interactions in social and ecological systems, respectively, and a number of general spatial principles and mechanisms are emerging that have relevance across many different kinds of system. Landscape ecologists, with their background in spatially explicit pattern–process analysis, are well placed to contribute to this emerging research agenda.     

Global biodiversity scenarios and landscape ecology

The composition of ecological communities is both cause and consequence of landscape pattern. Predicting biodiversity change involves understanding not only ecology and evolution, but also complex changes in human societies and economies. Scenarios offer a less rigid approach to thinking about biodiversity change in a policy and management context. They shift the focus of research and management from making singular predictions and developing single ‘best’ strategies to exploring uncertainties and assessing the outcomes of alternative policies. The four Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) biodiversity scenarios illustrate current approaches to biodiversity estimation in global scenarios. The MA biodiversity scenarios are built around the species–area relationship and the magnitudes of a few area-dependent processes such as nitrogen deposition and climate change. Some of the most obvious landscape-related omissions from the MA scenarios are pattern-process feedbacks, scale dependencies, and the role of landscape configuration. While the MA has set a new standard for biodiversity scenarios, future exercises would benefit from a more multi-scale and more mechanistic framework. I use examples from research on the landscape ecology and biogeography of African ticks to illustrate how a hypothesis-based approach can be used to analyse the multi-scale, multi-level drivers of change in patterns of species occurrences. Two of the most important challenges for the future development of both landscape ecology and biodiversity scenarios are to become more mechanistic (less pattern-based) and more general (applicable across different landscapes).     

Integrating landscape ecology and conservation physiology

The need to understand how anthropogenic landscape alteration affects fauna populations has never been more pressing. The importance of developing an understanding of the processes behind local extinction is widely acknowledged, but inference from spatial patterns of fauna distribution continues to dominate. However, this approach is limited in its ability to generate strong predictions about future distributions and local extinctions, especially when population-level responses to landscape alteration are subject to long time lags. We review the potential for indices of physiological stress and condition to contribute to understanding of how landscape pattern affects species persistence. Such measures can indicate habitat quality from the perspective of the individual animal, and can reveal environmental stressors before their negative consequences begin to manifest at a population level. Spatial patterns of chronic stress may therefore yield valuable insight into how landscape alteration influences species. We propose that the emerging disciplines of conservation physiology and macrophysiology have much to offer spatial ecology, and have great potential to reveal the physiological pathways through which habitat alteration affects fauna populations and their persistence in fragmented landscapes.     

Interdisciplinarity,landscape ecology and the `Transformation of Agricultural Landscapes'

The theme, the `Transformation of Agricultural Landscapes' is used as a context for examining the current status of landscape ecology and its ability to provide a critical set of responses to a defined range of environmental issues. The links between academic structures and the public demand for landscape-based information raises the potential for landscape ecology to provide solutions. Current approaches within landscape ecology are examined and the dominance of the interdisciplinary approach is found to be deficient. A solution is for the land(scape) system itself to become the initial focus of landscape research. A land system has its own systematic properties which extend beyond the biological dominance of ecosystem science which to many is the basis for landscape ecology. For knowledge of the landscape itself to emerge, landscape ecology must develop more as a discipline with its own theoretical bases and foci than as an interdisciplinary area.     

Landscape ecology meets landscape science

Landscape ecology is a broad field in a patchwork of related disciplines. Giving landscape ecology a definition and delimiting it from related research areas is both a challenge and a necessity. Past endeavors have focused on expert opinions, analyses of published papers, and conference proceedings. We used a mix of all three, including a unique keyword analysis in two leading landscape-related journals, to highlight latest developments in landscape ecology between 2010 and 2013. Our analysis confirms the key topics of Wu (Landscape Ecol 28(1):1–11, 2013), and suggests that of those connectivity is dominating in terms of research output. However, we also found evidence that the borders of the journal Landscape Ecology are fuzzier than sketched in recent publications. There is a large overlap with the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, and in general a growing weight of conservation, landscape management, and planning related issues in the landscape ecology community. We conclude by encouraging the continued inclusion and strengthening of socio-ecological hot topics such as urban studies and landscape-human interactions in landscape ecological studies and subsequently in the journal landscape ecology.     

Zooscape ecology: a conceptual analysis of zoos and landscape ecology

Landscape Ecology - Zoos are a unique landscape with fascinating connections to the principles of landscape ecology. These ‘zooscapes’ have a focus on managing wild species. This...     

Bridging the gap between ecology and spatial planning in landscape ecology

Landscapes are studied by pattern (the geographical approach) and by process (the ecological approach within landscape ecology). The future of landscape ecology depends on whether the two approaches can be integrated. We present an approach to bridge the gap between the many detailed process studies on species, and applied activities such as landscape evaluation and design, which require integrated knowledge. The approach consists of four components: 1) Empirical case studies of different scales, organisms and processes. 2) Modeling studies to extrapolate empirical studies across space and time. 3) Modeling studies to produce guidelines and standards for landscape conditions. 4) Methods and tools for integration to the landscape level, which can be built into multidisciplinary tools for design and evaluation. We conclude that in the landscape ecological literature, the steps 1 and 2 are well represented, whereas the steps 3 and 4 are mostly neglected. We challenge landscape ecologists to push landscape ecology to a higher level of maturation and to further develop its profile as a problem-oriented science.This revised version was published online in May 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Using normative scenarios in landscape ecology

The normative landscape scenario is one of many types of scenario methods that are used by landscape ecologists. We describe how normative landscape scenarios are different from other types and how these differences create special potential for engaging science to build landscape policy and for exploring scientific questions in realistic simulated landscapes. We describe criteria and a method for generating normative scenarios to realize this potential in both policy and landscape ecology research. Finally, we describe how the method and criteria apply to an interdisciplinary project that proposed alternative scenarios for federal agricultural policy and related futures for agricultural watersheds in Iowa, USA.This revised version was published online in May 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Why history matters in landscape ecology

Landscape ecology traditionally has been limited to the study of terrestrial systems; however, the questions and methods defining the science are equally relevant for marine and coastal systems. The reciprocal relationship between spatial pattern and ecological processes and the overarching effect of scale on this relationship was being explored in some marine and coastal settings as the general discipline of landscape ecology was evolving throughout the latter two decades of the last century. As with all components of the biosphere, an understanding of these relationships is critical for successful management of marine and coastal systems. In these systems, widely dispersed field or ship-based observations and lack of broad scale data have historically precluded quantification of large-scale patterns and processes and hindered management efforts. However, relatively recent advances in geographic information systems, remote sensing and computer technologies have begun to address these issues and are now permitting assessments of pattern and process in oceans. The intent of this special issue is to highlight research that is adapting the tools of landscape ecology to answer ecological questions within marine and coastal systems, to address the unique challenges faced in these landscapes, and to stimulate an exchange of ideas and solutions to common problems. Inspiration for this special issue of Landscape Ecology began with a special session on “Marine and Coastal Applications in Landscape Ecology” that was held at the 19th Annual Symposium of the United States Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology, March 31–April 2, 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada.