Principios ecologia da paisagem

Principles of Landscape Ecology
By: William R. Clark (Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University) © 2010 Nature Education

Citation: Clark, W. (2010) Principles of Landscape Ecology. Nature Education Knowledge 2(2):34

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

Historical Perspective

Throughout the history of ecology, scientists have observed variability across time and space in the abiotic and biotic components of ecosystems. But early ecologists did not have the technology or concepts to explicitly deal with spatial heterogeneity, so there was a tendency to develop explanations by grouping organisms into uniform and recognizable units. For example, scientists were struck by the relatively consistent associations of plant species and grouped vegetation into community types (Mueller-Dombois & Ellenberg 1974). Compared to vegetation, where observed change was rather slow, observations of fluctuating populations ranging from bacteria and protozoans in the laboratory to snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) in the boreal forest, led scientists to mathematical theories that explicitly focused on temporal dynamics (Kingsland 1995). But the resulting models treated the environment as spatially homogeneous. Such views of nature and the theory about dynamics led to “equilibrium” concepts (May 1973) that dominated ecological thinking from the 1920s through the 1980s.

During the 1980s, advances in the accessibility of computing, remotely sensed satellite and aerial imagery, development of geographic information systems (GIS, ARC/INFO was first released in 1982), and spatial statistical methods (Fortin & Dale 2005), enabled ecologists to observe and analyze spatial heterogeneity ranging from local habitats to entire