Macrosystems ecology: understanding ecological patterns and processes at continental scales

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org I this paper, we present a conceptual framework for investigating ecological patterns and processes at regional to continental scales. Ecological phenomena operate across a range of scales (Figure 1), but the development of ecological theory of regions to continents lags behind that of finer scales. Better understanding of broad scales is needed because these are the extents over which many environmental problems have their causes and consequences. Our framework incorporates existing theories from other ecological subdisciplines and environmental disciplines, to promote broad-scale ecology as more general, integrative, and predictive. We define “macroscales” as regional to continental extents with distances spanning hundreds to thousands of kilometers (ie larger than landscapes; Urban et al. 1987). “Components” at these spatial scales (Figure 2) are biological (eg species, populations, communities), geophysical (eg climate, physiography, hydrology, geochemistry), and social (eg political systems, economies, cultures), and can span timescales ranging from days to millennia. When interacting with one another and with phenomena at other spatial or temporal scales, these components constitute a “macrosystem”; macrosystems ecology (MSE) is the study of such extensive and multiscaled systems. This perspective treats patterns and processes as dynamic and interactive, both within and across scales of time and space.