Conducting Sound Ecological Studies at the Landscape Scale: Research Challenges

Landscape ecology is maturing as both a traditional natural science and an integrative field. It strives to meet the demands of traditional science through incremental scientific achievements realized via experimentation and hypothesis testing, while working at scales not conducive to the paradigm of controlled experiments. At the same time, landscape ecology is the intersection of many older scientific disciplines (geography, forestry, wildlife ecology, etc.) and applied fields (landscape planning, conservation), each contributing independent views and unique concepts to studying the ecology of landscapes. As such, a unifying theory or paradigm under which to evaluate and design sound ecological studies at the landscape scale is still maturing. This chapter explores these paradoxes and the nature of research in landscape ecology. Through this book, we have identified five challenges in the ecology of landscapes that highlight and synthesize current approaches, issues, challenges, and successes. We place these challenges: process dynamics; scaling; landscape experimentation; modeling and visualization; and research transfer and application, within a knowledge creation framework to identify how work in these areas is advancing landscape ecological science.