Effective Exercises in Teaching Landscape Ecology

Abstract

The development of landscape ecology and its many applications to land management created a need for courses that address both the conceptual and practical sides of the discipline. Graduate seminars and full-fledged courses in landscape ecology are now featured at many colleges and universities; undergraduate ecology courses may include an introduction to principles of landscape ecology. Because landscape ecology involves the study of spatially explicit ecological patterns and processes along with much larger regions than ecologists have typically studied, landscape ecologists often employ a variety of new quantitative analysis techniques in their work. In parlicular, metrics are used to quantify spatial patterns, and the importance of spatial heterogeneity for ecological processes is evaluated. Modeling also plays an important role in landscape ecology because it is logistically impossible to conduct truly replicated experiments across entire landscapes. Students of landscape ecology, even at the undergraduate level, need some familiarity with the tools of the discipline lo gain confidence in the practice of landscape ecology and to develop a critical understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques.

Citation

Pearson, Scott M.; Turner, Monica G.; Urban, Dean L. 1999. Effective Exercises in Teaching Landscape Ecology. Lanscape Ecological Analysis. Springer(1999)