Introduction and overview: approaches to addressing landscape-scale problems in ecology

Title	Introduction and overview: approaches to addressing landscape-scale problems in ecology
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2002
Authors	Peters DC, Urban D.L., Herrick JE
Conference Name	87th Annual Meeting, Ecological Society of America
Date Published	August 4-9, 2002
Conference Location	Tucson, AZ
ARIS Log Number	139733
Abstract	This talk provides an introduction to the symposium that will address tradeoffs and consequences of using alternative scaling approaches to deal with timely and critical ecological issues. Wildlife conservation, patterns and dynamics in carbon sequestration, loss of biodiversity, spread of invasive species, and atmosphere-biosphere interactions are issues that require an explicit consideration of spatial and temporal scaling at the landscape level. We present three major approaches to addressing these types of ecological problems that vary in their complexity and degree of spatial interactions. Each approach is discussed in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. Examples of the types of questions most suited to each approach are given. Each core talk covering the major scaling approaches is co-authored by a team of experts representing each of the following disciplines: vegetation dynamics, wildlife conservation, and carbon and soil water dynamics. We also present several highly visible and important case studies to illustrate the connections and relatedness among approaches and disciplines. We demonstrate the relevance of these approaches to addressing landscape-scale problems both by scaling information up from plots and by scaling down from coarse regional data. Although it is widely recognized that scaling is an important issue, there have been few attempts to provide guidance in selection and use of different approaches. This symposium provides this synthetic overview.