Landscape Ecology and Ecosystem Management

Description

At what scale should we manage or study an ecosystem or landscape? What is a natural landscape, and how do (or can) we manage for it? Geographers and ecologists have pondered the question of scale in ecosystems, and how to apply scale issues to conservation and research. Many ecosystem and related studies have been conducted at fine spatial scales, yet many of the problems and issues of resource management and conservation are best approached at broader, landscape-level spatial scales.  This program will investigate broader scale approaches to on-going conservation and management activities in important ecosystems and how scientists address the issues of scale and the ecological patterns and processes used to define "natural systems."

Scale, landscape analysis and pattern-process interactions will be addressed using computer labs in GIS and spatial analysis. Students will learn about landscape ecology concepts through lectures, field trips to nearby natural areas to observe pattern-process interactions, and through the design and implementation of a landscape ecology research project. Through class and field work students will learn about important ecological principles such as disturbance regimes, biotic diversity and species flow, nutrient and energy flows, and landscape change over time. Seminar readings will tie landscape ecology principles to on-going ecosystem management activities.

Students will develop skills in ecological pattern and spatial analysis, natural history and field interpretation, and in the generation of multiple research hypotheses and methods to address those hypotheses.