What is a landscape in biology? A landscape is "a mosaic of heterogeneous land forms, vegetation types, and land uses" (Urban et al., 1987). Therefore, assemblages of different ecosystems (the physical environments and the species that inhabit them, including humans) create landscapes on Earth.
What is landscape?
According to Richard Forman and Michael Godron, a landscape is a heterogeneous land area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems that is repeated in similar form throughout, whereby they list woods, meadows, marshes and villages as examples of a landscape's ecosystems, and state that a landscape is an area at least a few kilometres wide.
What is the nature of landscape ecology?
Giovanni Zurlini, in Encyclopedia of Ecology (Second Edition), 2019 Landscape ecology is considered to be a holistic and transdisciplinary science for landscape study, appraisal, history, planning and management, conservation, and restoration dealing with the interrelation between human society and its living space.
What is landscape in topology?
Topological ecology at the landscape scale (e.g. Forman & Godron ): 'Landscape' is defined as a heterogeneous land area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems (woods, meadows, marshes, villages, etc.) that is repeated in similar form throughout.
What is landscape ecology and population genetics?
Landscape ecology has also been combined with population genetics to form the field of landscape genetics, which addresses how landscape features influence the population structure and gene flow of plant and animal populations across space and time and on how the quality of intervening landscape, known as "matrix," influences spatial variation.
What does landscape mean in ecology?
Landscape ecology is the study of the pattern and interaction between ecosystems within a region of interest, and the way the interactions affect ecological processes, especially the unique effects of spatial heterogeneity on these interactions.
What is landscape in biodiversity?
Landscape diversity is the complexity and diversity of landscape elements in composition,structure and function, which refers not only to number of different patch types, patch size,and patch shape within a landscape mosaic, but also to the spatial arrangement of different patch types and the connectivity and ...
What is an example of a landscape in an ecosystem?
Within landscapes it is usually possible to define a series of different ecosystem types occurring as patches within the greater landscape. For example, in an agricultural landscape the patches might be different fields, woodlots, hedgerows, buildings, and ponds.
What is Landscape science?
A landscape is part of the Earths surface that can be viewed at one time from one place. It consists of the geographic features that mark, or are characteristic of, a particular area.
What is the difference between ecosystem and landscape?
As nouns the difference between landscape and ecosystem is that landscape is a portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all the objects it contains while ecosystem is a system formed by an ecological community and its environment that functions as a unit.
Why is landscape ecology important?
Landscape ecology provides an important framework for Critical Zone research through: (1) integrating 3D dimensionality in the analysis of landscape systems; (2) contextualizing the Critical Zone processes both temporally and spatially; and (3) investigating problems related with scaling.
What are the different types of landscapes?
List of different types of landscape. Desert, Plain, Taiga, Tundra, Wetland, Mountain, Mountain range, Cliff, Coast, Littoral zone, Glacier, Polar regions of Earth, Shrubland, Forest, Rainforest, Woodland, Jungle, Moors, Steppe, Valley.
What are landscape patterns?
In landscape ecology, spatial patterns refer to how we define the arrangement, structure, and placement of objects within any given landscape. This can include anything from patches of forestry, to river banks, to the landscape of man-made settlements like towns.
How do ecosystems interact across landscapes?
A more natural interaction between ecosystems is the movement of animals across huge distances. Animals, especially predators, move large distances in search of food and to mark territories. This can often span areas that involve many ecosystems.
What are landscape elements?
An aesthetic landscape design incorporates five key elements: line, form, texture, color and scale.
How does landscape affect biodiversity?
Abstract. The importance of landscape heterogeneity to biodiversity may depend on the size of the geographic range of species, which in turn can reflect species traits (such as habitat generalization) and the effects of historical and contemporary land covers.
What is landscape composition?
Composition is how you arrange and frame elements in a scene to guide the viewer's eyes into and through your images. Good compositions in landscape photography have just enough detail and elements to guide your viewer's eyes towards the most important parts of the scene. Too many elements can create distractions.
What is a heterogeneous landscape?
Landscape heterogeneity is defined as the number and proportions of different cover types (compositional heterogeneity) and their complex spatial arrangement (configurational heterogeneity) in the landscape (Fahrig and Nuttle 2005).
What is ecosystem diversity examples?
An example of ecological diversity on a global scale would be the variation in ecosystems, such as deserts, forests, grasslands, wetlands and oceans. Ecological diversity is the largest scale of biodiversity, and within each ecosystem, there is a great deal of both species and genetic diversity.
What is landscape classification?
Landscape classification for ecological purposes requires that broadly-described land use/cover types be reclassified as, for example, habitat quality or units of landscape for some target guild or species ( Lafortezza et al., 2010 ).
What determines a species' landscape structure?
Landscape structure, in combination with life-history traits of a species, determines whether that species exists as a single large population, as a metapopulation of demes connected by movement of individuals, or as a collection of separate isolated populations.
Why is landscape ecology important?
Landscape ecology is an important dimension of environmental attributes that are critical for maintaining an ecosystem’s health and biodiversity and is filling the knowledge gap in sustainable development (e.g., Termorshuizen and Opdam, 2009 ). Landscape ecology pertains to the generation and dynamics of ecosystem patterns, as well as the implications of population-, community-, and ecosystem-level process patterns ( Urban, 2006 ). Thus, landscape metrics have been widely used as crucial indicators, in studying sustainable planning and development. Landscape metrics quantify the composition and configuration of ecosystems across a landscape (e.g., patch size, shape, nearest-neighbor distance, proximity index, etc.) thus allowing a quantitative comparison between different landscapes or within the same landscape at different times. Once spatial information on landscapes has been derived from remotely sensed data, pattern analysis can take place considering each landscape unit (e.g., land use/cover type) as part of a discrete patch mosaic.
What is landscape mosaic?
Landscapes are spatial mosaics of interacting biophysical and socioeconomic components (Figure 1 ). Just as in other ecological disciplines, a spectrum of views exists as to the relative salience or prominence of the two aspects of landscapes.
How does landscape ecology help critical zones?
Landscape ecology provides an important framework for Critical Zone research through: (1) integrating 3D dimensionality in the analysis of landscape systems; (2) contextualizing the Critical Zone processes both temporally and spatially; and (3) investigating problems related with scaling. Humans and their built environment are considered part of the landscape. The landscape ecology system perspective analyzes the landscape in terms of composition, structure, and function. Understanding the complexity of natural systems is a common goal of a variety of diverse disciplines in the Earth sciences and interdisciplinarity is a must. Landscape ecology focuses on distribution and changes in the horizontal plane, whereas Critical Zone research appears to focus more on vertical distributions and changes. A complementary approach would be to combine the two perspectives to form a perspective that combines the horizontality of landscapes with the processes occurring in the vertical direction. Therefore, attention should focus on the properties of the landscape system proper instead of attention being focused on the factors acting upon the land. Therefore, Critical Zone research and landscape ecology are complementary approaches that provide understanding from a transdisciplinarity approach.
What are the problems of landscape ecology?
Thus, the landscape ecology of populations is related to conservation.
Where did landscape ecology originate?
Landscape ecology evolved in Central Europe as a result of a holistic approach, and deals with the interrelationships between humans and their open and built landscapes (Naveh and Lieberman (2013).
What is landscape ecology?
Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizational levels of research and policy. Concisely, landscape ecology can be described as the science ...
What is the meaning of landscape structure and pattern?
A landscape with structure and pattern implies that it has spatial heterogeneity, or the uneven distribution of objects across the landscape. Heterogeneity is a key element of landscape ecology that separates this discipline from other branches of ecology.
What is the measure of how parts of a landscape differ from one another?
Heterogeneity is the measure of how parts of a landscape differ from one another. Landscape ecology looks at how this spatial structure affects organism abundance at the landscape level, as well as the behavior and functioning of the landscape as a whole. This includes studying the influence of pattern, or the internal order of a landscape, on process, or the continuous operation of functions of organisms. Landscape ecology also includes geomorphology as applied to the design and architecture of landscapes. Geomorphology is the study of how geological formations are responsible for the structure of a landscape.
What is the study of the internal order of landscapes?
This includes studying the influence of pattern, or the internal order of a landscape, on process, or the continuous operation of functions of organisms. Landscape ecology also includes geomorphology as applied to the design and architecture of landscapes. Geomorphology is the study of how geological formations are responsible for the structure ...
What is a topological ecosystem?
Topological ecology at the landscape scale 'Landscape' is defined as a heterogeneous land area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems (woods, meadows, marshes, villages, etc.) that is repeated in similar form throughout.
What is the evolution of landscape ecology?
One central landscape ecology theory originated from MacArthur & Wilson's The Theory of Island Biogeography. This work considered the biodiversity on islands as the result of competing forces of colonization from a mainland stock and stochastic extinction.
What are the characteristics of landscape ecology?
The most salient characteristics of landscape ecology are its emphasis on the relationship among pattern, process and scale, and its focus on broad-scale ecological and environmental issues. These necessitate the coupling between biophysical and socioeconomic sciences.
Historical Perspective
Throughout the history of ecology, scientists have observed variability across time and space in the abiotic and biotic components of ecosystems.
Terminology and Concepts
Imaging and mapping technology naturally promoted a patch-corridor-matrix approach to landscape ecology. Examining the map of an area in North Dakota (Figure 1) helps to define important vocabulary and illustrates some typical questions studied by landscape ecologists.
Themes of Study and Application
The development and dynamics of spatial heterogeneity in landscapes is a central theme of ecological studies, especially the effects of conversion of natural ecosystems into human dominated systems such as agricultural or urban land use.
What is a landscape?
Noun. specific natural feature on the Earth's surface. landscape. Noun. the geographic features of a region. landscape painting. Noun. painting depicting geographic features able to be viewed at one time from one place. Mojave Desert.
What is landscape in geography?
A landscape is part of the Earths surface that can be viewed at one time from one place. It consists of the geographic features that mark, or are characteristic of, a particular area.
What is an associative landscape?
An associative landscape is much like an organically evolved landscape, except physical evidence of historical human use of the site may be missing. Its significance is an association with spiritual, economic, or cultural features of a people.
What is the second type of cultural landscape?
The second type of cultural landscape is an organically evolved landscape . An organically evolved landscape is one where the spiritual, economic, and cultural significance of an area developed along with its physical characteristics.
What is a cultural landscape?
Cultural Landscape. A landscape that people have modified is called a cultural landscape. People and the plants they grow, the animals they care for, and the structures they build make up cultural landscapes. Such landscapes can vary greatly.
What is UNESCO's definition of a landscape?
The first is a clearly defined landscape designed and created intentionally by man.
What are some examples of human impact on landscapes?
An example of human impact on landscape can be seen along the coastline of the Netherlands. Water from the North Sea was pumped out of certain areas, uncovering the fertile soil below. Dike s and dams were built to keep water from these areas, now used for farming and other purposes.
What is adaptive landscape?
An adaptive landscape shows the relationship between fitness (vertical axis) and one or several traits or genes (horizontal axes). An adaptive landscape can therefore be viewed as a form of response surface, describing how a dependent variable (fitness) is causally influenced by one or several predictor variables (traits or genes).
What is the process of evolution by natural selection?
Evolution by natural selection in the context of an adaptive landscape can be viewed as a hill-climbing process, in which populations climb upwards to the trait or gene combination with the highest fitness, which are called “adaptive peaks.”.
Is adaptive landscape a part of evolution?
Whereas adaptive landscapes have become a part of mainstream evolutionary biology, they have also generated considerable controversy and confusion, as well as criticisms, mainly from philosophers.
What is landscape ecology?
Landscape Ecology is the flagship journal of a well-established and rapidly developing interdisciplinary science that focuses explicitly on the ecological understanding of spatial heterogeneity. Landscape Ecology draws together expertise from both biophysical and socioeconomic sciences to explore basic and applied research questions concerning ...
What is landscape sustainability science?
Building on and expanding beyond the fundamentals of landscape ecology, landscape sustainability science (LSS) aims to provide a transdisciplinary science foundation for landscape sustainability by emphatically interrogating the landscape pattern-ecosystem services-human wellbeing nexus. Since the term was coined in 2013, LSS research has flourished. To help enhance landscape ecology’s relevance to sustainability and move LSS forward, this Topical Collection brings together a number of influential articles on landscape sustainability published in Landscape Ecology since two decades ago. We welcome additional submissions to this Topical Collection which is expected to continue to grow in size and significance. Students and Early Career Researchers are especially encouraged to submit to this Topical Collection.
What is the Journal of the International Association for Landscape Ecology?
Journal of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (US and World) Covers relationships among landscape pattern, ecological processes and scale. Explores the nature and ecological consequences of land use and land cover change.
Overview
History
One central landscape ecology theory originated from MacArthur & Wilson's The Theory of Island Biogeography. This work considered the biodiversity on islands as the result of competing forces of colonization from a mainland stock and stochastic extinction. The concepts of island biogeography were generalized from physical islands to abstract patches of habitat by Levins' metapopulation model (which can be applied e.g. to forest islands in the agricultural landscape )…
Terminology
The German term Landschaftsökologie–thus landscape ecology–was coined by German geographer Carl Troll in 1939. He developed this terminology and many early concepts of landscape ecology as part of his early work, which consisted of applying aerial photograph interpretation to studies of interactions between environment and vegetation.
Explanation
Heterogeneity is the measure of how parts of a landscape differ from one another. Landscape ecology looks at how this spatial structure affects organism abundance at the landscape level, as well as the behavior and functioning of the landscape as a whole. This includes studying the influence of pattern, or the internal order of a landscape, on process, or the continuous operation of functions of organisms. Landscape ecology also includes geomorphology as applied to the design and architecture of landscapes. Geomorphology is the study of h…
Heterogeneity is the measure of how parts of a landscape differ from one another. Landscape ecology looks at how this spatial structure affects organism abundance at the landscape level, as well as the behavior and functioning of the landscape as a whole. This includes studying the influence of pattern, or the internal order of a landscape, on process, or the continuous operation of functions of organisms. Landscape ecology also includes geomorphology as applied to the design and architecture of landscapes. Geomorphology is the study of how geol…
Relationship to ecological theory
Some research programmes of landscape ecology theory, namely those standing in the European tradition, may be slightly outside of the "classical and preferred domain of scientific disciplines" because of the large, heterogeneous areas of study. However, general ecology theory is central to landscape ecology theory in many aspects. Landscape ecology consists of four main principles: the development and dynamics of spatial heterogeneity, interactions and exchanges across heterogeneous landscapes, influences of spatial heterogeneit…
Important terms
Landscape ecology not only created new terms, but also incorporated existing ecological terms in new ways. Many of the terms used in landscape ecology are as interconnected and interrelated as the discipline itself.
Certainly, 'landscape' is a central concept in landscape ecology. It is, however, defined in quite different ways. For example: Carl Troll conceives of landscape not as a mental construct but as an objectively given 'organic entity', a harmonic individuum of space. Ernst Neef defines …
Landscape ecology not only created new terms, but also incorporated existing ecological terms in new ways. Many of the terms used in landscape ecology are as interconnected and interrelated as the discipline itself.
Certainly, 'landscape' is a central concept in landscape ecology. It is, however, defined in quite different ways. For example: Carl Troll conceives of landscape not as a mental construct but as an objectively given 'organic entity', a harmonic individuum of space. Ernst Neef defines landscapes as sections within the uninterrupted earth-wide int…
Theory
Landscape ecology theory stresses the role of human impacts on landscape structures and functions. It also proposes ways for restoring degraded landscapes. Landscape ecology explicitly includes humans as entities that cause functional changes on the landscape. Landscape ecology theory includes the landscape stability principle, which emphasizes the importance of landscape structural heterogeneity in developing resistance to disturbances, recovery from disturbances, and promoting total system stability. This principle is a major contribution to genera…
Application
Developments in landscape ecology illustrate the important relationships between spatial patterns and ecological processes. These developments incorporate quantitative methods that link spatial patterns and ecological processes at broad spatial and temporal scales. This linkage of time, space, and environmental change can assist managers in applying plans to solve environmental problems. The increased attention in recent years on spatial dynamics has highlighted the need for new quantitative methods that can analyze patterns, determine …
Developments in landscape ecology illustrate the important relationships between spatial patterns and ecological processes. These developments incorporate quantitative methods that link spatial patterns and ecological processes at broad spatial and temporal scales. This linkage of time, space, and environmental change can assist managers in applying plans to solve environmental problems. The increased attention in recent years on spatial dynamics has highlighted the need for new quantitative methods that can analyze patterns, determine the impor…