Introduction: Approaches to scaling information from plots or regions to landscapes

Title	Introduction: Approaches to scaling information from plots or regions to landscapes
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2002
Authors	Peters DC, Durban D.L.
Conference Name	US-International Association for Landscape Ecology
Date Published	April 23-26, 200
Conference Location	Lincoln, NE
ARIS Log Number	140890
Abstract	This talk provides an introduction to the symposium that will address the tradeoffs and consequences of using alternative scaling approaches to dealing with critical and timely ecological issues. Three major approaches will be described that vary in their complexity and degree of spatial interactions: (1) nonspatial, (2) spatially implicit, and (3) spatially interactive. Each approach will be introduced in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. Examples of the types of questions most suited to each approach will also be given. Each talk will be co-authored by representatives of the following disciplines: vegetation dynamics, wildlife conservation, or carbon and soil water dynamics. Case studies will be used to illustrate the connections and relatedness among approaches and disciplines. The relevance of these approaches to addressing landscape-scale problems will be addressed 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 synthetic attempts to provide guidance in selection and use of different types of approaches. This synthetic overview will be provided as part of our symposium.