Dealing with Scale in Landscape Analysis: An Overview

Scale and Scaling Scale is an essential concept in both natural and social sciences, and has been defined in several different ways (Gibson et al. [4], van Gardingen [19], Peterson and Parker [16], Marceau [12], Withers and Meentemeyer [21], Jenerette and Wu [6]). In landscape ecology, scale refers primarily to grain (or resolution) and extent in space or/and time. Scale may be absolute (measured in spatial or time units) or relative (denoted as a ratio). Scale may be the observer's measuring stick or viewing window size, a spatial or temporal characteristic of an ecological pattern or process, or a fundamental framework in which diverse ecological phenomena can be more effectively studied and understood individually and collectively. Scaling, on the other hand, is usually defined as the process of extrapolating or translating information from one scale to another, including scaling up and scaling down (Caldwell et al. [3], King [8], Wu [24]). Scale and scaling have become buzzwords in ecology in recent years as the research emphasis of the field has shifted from local to increasingly broader scales. This research emphasis shift is inevitable for at least two reasons. First, it has become evident that most if not all environmental and resource management problems can only be dealt with effectively at broad scales. The second and more profound reason is that ecologists are now acutely aware that, in order to unravel how nature works, we must understand broad-scale patterns and processes and relate them to those at fine scales with which we are most familiar. In both cases, transferring information between scales is indispensable.