INTRODUCTION TO LANDSCAPE

ECOLOGY
 INTRODUCTION

• Kuhn (1962), scientific research similarly to

other human activities provides a service that is
intimately associated with time, place, and
culture.
• In the time of MacArthur (1960s and 1970s) the
landscape was not recognized as an ecological
entity but only as a geographical entity.
• Today it is recognized that a landscape is the
result of meta-ecosystemic processes coupled
with cognitive ones, where energy, information,
and cybernetic mechanisms are interacting and
integrating to produce emergent patterns
(mosaics) and processes (resource-oriented
suitability).
• Today financial and economic mechanisms seem
to be the major actors able to modify the
functions and speed of the Earth’s gears
• The recent worldwide financial crisis has
cascade effects on most countries in the world
and is perceived by the population as more
dramatic than climatic changes
• Probably this is related to the contemporarity of
the crisis when compared to global changes that
have local diachronic effects.
Brief History of Landscape Ecology
• Landscape ecology is a young but well-
recognized ecological discipline dealing with the
spatial distribution of organisms, patterns, and
processes
• This discipline developed after the Second
World War in central and eastern Europe as an
applied science used to manage the countryside.
• It became popular as a basic science, especially
in the US, only during the last two decades.
• A long and intense debate between ecologists
has accompanied its development
• Despite the uncertainty, landscape ecology has
attracted several students from many different
disciplines including geography, biology,
engineering, planning and land management,
countryside conservation and, more recently,
economics.
• Ecologists and spatial modeler centered into this
“cultural arena” only recently (INTECOL
Congress of Syracuse, 1986).
• Three different themes can be recognized in
landscape ecology during its evolution(Fig. 1.1)
• The first theme (UK) was inspired by the
patterned complexity or the simplification
introduced into the environment by human use
• This approach considers the landscape as a
mosaic of patches of forested, cultivated, and
urbanized areas
• According to this vision, humans are responsible
for most of the land modifications
• The active role of humans as principal modifiers
is a central part of the research.
• The second theme emerged in the US and deals with
the ecology of large areas (landscapes)
• Such an approach seems extremely important for
managing the remaining areas in which human
disturbance has not been great or in which natural
processes are persisting in spite of continuous
human development.
• Nature conservation in natural parks seems to be
one of the major areas in which landscape ecology
could be an effective tool for forecasting the changes
both inside and outside such areas.
• Broad-scale processes such as erosion or fire can be
studied using a plethora of tools that span the
application of remote sensing techniques, GIS,
spatial metrics, and spatial statistics.
• The third theme (US) takes into consideration
the processes that are dominated by a spatial
context, particularly, the spatial arrangement of
organisms in a matrix
• Such an approach is very promising and
attractive from many points of view
• The spatial arrangement of organisms indicates
the distribution of the resources, and secondly
describes the relationships between and among
populations and species
DEFINITION OF COMMONLY USED TERMS IN LANDSCAPE
ECOLOGY

• Configuration: Specific arrangement of spatial elements; often used

synonymously with spatial structure or patch structure.
• Connectivity: Spatial continuity of a habitat or cover type across a
landscape. From an organismal view, connectivity is ‘the degree to
which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement among resource
patches
• Corridor: Relatively narrow strip of a particular type that differs from
the areas adjacent on both sides.
• Cover type: Category within a classification scheme defined by the
user that distinguishes among the different habitats, ecosystems, or
vegetation types on a landscape.
• Edge: Portion of an ecosystem or cover type near its perimeter and
within which environmental conditions may differ from interior
locations in the ecosystem; also used as a measure of the length of
adjacency between cover types on a landscape.
• Fragmentation: Breaking up of a habitat or cover type into smaller,
disconnected parcels.
• Heterogeneity: Quality or state of consisting of dissimilar elements,
as with mixed habitats or cover types occurring on a landscape;
opposite of homogeneity, in which elements are the same.
• Landscape: Area that is spatially heterogeneous in at least one factor
of interest.
• Matrix: Background cover type in a landscape, characterized by
extensive cover and high connectivity; not all landscapes have a
definable matrix.
• Patch: Surface area that differs from its surroundings in nature or
appearance.
• Scale: Spatial or temporal dimension of an object or process,
characterized by both grain and extent.
• Landscape Ecology: Focuses on 1) the spatial relationships among
landscape elements or ecosystems, 2) the flows of energy, mineral
nutrients, and species among the elements, and 3) the ecological
dynamics of the landscape mosaic through time.