Large Scale Landscape Experiments

An overview of relationships between landscape change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity conservation, using key lessons from the Tumut Fragmentation Study.

An overview of relationships between landscape change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity conservation, using key lessons from the Tumut Fragmentation Study.

This book offers the first guide to landscape ecologists on the art and science of doing experiments, both observational and manipulative. How do you conduct an experiment when your study subject is as big as a landscape? Issues of scale, spatial heterogeneity and limitations on replication may challenge scientists seeking to carry out robust experiments in landscape ecology. Beginning with an overview of the history and philosophy of the scientific method, and tracing the development of experimental approaches in ecology broadly, the first half of the book discusses the broader issues of what makes a good experiment. Individual chapters describe unique aspects of landscape ecology that present challenges to experimentation, with suggestions for solutions on issues of scale, and how to apply controls, randomization and adequate replication in a landscape setting. The second half of the book describes different kinds of landscape ecology experimental approaches including: large-scale manipulations experimental model landscapes mesocosms and microcosms in silico experiments novel landscapes Each chapter describes the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and identifies the types of landscape ecology concepts and questions that a research can address. Examples from around the world, in a myriad of different environments, help to illustrate the ideas in each chapter. Together with an annotated resources section, this book aims to stimulate ideas and inspire creativity for graduate students and early career researchers who want to conduct better experiments in landscape ecology.

Landscape change and habitat fragmentation are key factors impacting biodiversity worldwide. These processes have many facets, each of which is usually studied in isolation. The Tumut Fragmentation Study has run for over 11 years and yielded extensive data on changes in both plant and animal populations in areas of native forest and pine plantation. The study is unique in the way that many different factors and processes, influencing a wide range of species groups, have been studied in the one large-scale natural experiment. Writing for academic researchers, professionals and graduate students, David Lindenmayer uses the study and other relevant research to provide an overview of the relationships between landscape change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity conservation. Key lessons are drawn on throughout the book, on the design and implementation of large-scale ecological studies, biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes, and the management of plantation landscapes for enhanced nature conservation.

A summary of much of the experimental work on the spatial ecology of small mammals. This field has entered an exciting stage with such new techniques as GIS and systems modeling becoming available. Leading contributors describe and analyze the most well-known case studies and provide new insights into how landscape patterns and processes have had an impact on small mammals and how small mammals have, in turn, affected landscape structure and composition.

This book sets out a paradigm of experimental geographical ecology and its core—landscape ecology—providing a number of empirical statistical models and ecological geographical concepts developed on the basis of these. It highlights the mechanisms of formation of regional- and local-level landscape-ecological systems, their natural and anthropogenic dynamics, and their evolutionary trends. It presents numerical methods of making landscape-ecological forecasts and assessing forest sustainability, and provides quantitative estimates of local and regional biotic regulation of the carbon cycle according to the scenarios of modern temperature growth and mitigation of warming, set out by the Paris (2015) Agreement on Climate Change. As such, the book will be a useful source of reference for field research, statistical and cartographic processing of the obtained data, mathematical modeling, geoecological interpretation of results, and the creation of theoretical schemes of geosystem analysis. It will appeal to specialists in the fields of geographical ecology, landscape-ecological modeling, and environmental forecasting.

Future Sustainable Ecosystems: Complexity, Risk, Uncertainty provides an interdisciplinary, integrative overview of environmental problem-solving using statistics. It shows how statistics can be used to solve diverse environmental and socio-economic problems involving food, water, energy scarcity, and climate change risks. It synthesizes interdisciplinary theory, concepts, definitions, models and findings involved in complex global sustainability problem-solving, making it an essential guide and reference. It includes real-world examples and applications making the book accessible to a broader interdisciplinary readership. Discussions include a broad, integrated perspective on sustainability, integrated risk, multi-scale changes and impacts taking place within ecosystems worldwide. State-of-the-art statistical techniques, including Bayesian hierarchical, spatio-temporal, agent-based and game-theoretic approaches are explored. The author then focuses on the real-world integration of observational and experimental data and its use within statistical models.