The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology

Levin, Simon A.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-1769-6_15

Cited by 1,416 publications

(1,834 citation statements)

References 177 publications

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“…However, in the 1970s, the role of natural disturbance in ecosystems was increasingly recognized, and it was realized that it was unrealistic to assume that it was 'normal' for most ecosystems to be in a 'climax' state (Sprugel 1991). It is now widely understood that ecosystems are not static but are dynamic in both time and space (Levin 1992;Chapin et al 1996;Christensen et al 1996). Further, ecosystems are adaptive systems that are highly complex as a result of factors such as non-linear biotic interactions, threshold effects, evolutionary history, assembly history, past environmental disturbances, hysteresis and high levels of stochastic events (Levin 1999cited by Folke et al 2004Sinclair & Byrom 2006).…”

Section: What Is An Ecosystem?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecosystems, Ecosystem Processes and Global Change: Implications for Landscape Design

Manning¹

2007

Managing and Designing Landscapes for Conservation

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Section: What Is An Ecosystem?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While ecosystems are dynamic in both time and space (Levin 1992), the predicted magnitude and rapidity of humaninduced global environmental change demands a radical re-evaluation of how humans manage, design and restore ecosystems and landscapes. In this chapter, global change is briefly explained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystems, Ecosystem Processes and Global Change: Implications for Landscape Design

Manning¹

2007

Managing and Designing Landscapes for Conservation

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“…The simplest source of spatial patterning is the aggregation and local correlations due to the directed movement of individuals.These are the cause of many common spatial phenomena such as shoals of fish and insect swarms (Levin 1992;Gueron & Levin 1993;Reuter & Breckling 1994). …”

Section: Spatial Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most important questions that emerges from the consideration of space is the scale at which the modelling should take place (Wiens 1989;Menge & Olson 1990;DeRoos et al 1991;Levin 1992;Vail 1993).This can be broken into two independent problems: (i) which is the smallest scale of heterogeneity that should be considered; and (ii) how large a system is it necessary to study. I will consider the second question in the final section as it represents a significant problem in current research.…”

Section: A Question Of Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Models of Interacting Populations

Keeling

1999

Advanced Ecological Theory

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“…Thus highly parameterized models (as are often found in ecology) are neither powerful nor reliable predictors, because the numerical predictions can be precisely fitted to almost any data (Levin 1992). Holling (1964) also makes the point that because many numerical simulations involve estimation or condensing of the parameter space, they tend to make little reference to underlying mechanisms.…”

Section: Ecosystem Analysis and Emergent Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystem Analysis and the Governance of Natural Resources

McGlade

1999

Advanced Ecological Theory

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IntroductionDespite the growing hegemony of the environment, many of the earth's living resources are in decline or under serious threat of collapse. Such changes are occurring everywhere as a result of human population growth, alterations to the biosphere, via long-term trends in the climate, and increased levels of exploitation.Given that it is impractical to control the dynamics of most natural ecosystems, the current emphasis in many resource management systems on determinism, stability and optimization is clearly inappropriate. Instead, resource governance requires a new theoretical basis upon which to create management tools that will mitigate against the effects of change and cope with increasing levels of conflict over use demands.In previous chapters, new concepts and theoretical approaches have been presented to address the impacts of stochasticity, biological variation and external forcing functions on resource exploitation and ecosystem functioning. These have included different types of spatial models, individualbased models, pairwise correlations, trophic interactions, life-history dynamics and ecological economics. In this chapter I explore how these and other approaches can be integrated over a range of physical, biological and socioeconomic scales to respond to the problems of resource governance that now face us.System description is still one of the least resolved aspects of ecology. There are numerous approaches available, each using different criteria and operating over different space and time scales. They include biogeography, habitat delimitation, population and metapopulation dynamics, trophodynamics, etc. Once an approach and numeraire (e.g. numbers of species, units of carbon flow between trophic levels, etc.) has been adopted, the boundaries of an ecosystem need to be determined and the groupings within it established. But the problem is that ecosystems, by their very nature, are continuously changing, and the elements within them shifting between groups (e.g. age classes). Fuzzy logic (Zadeh 1965) provides a tool to address this problem and later in the chapter I explore its use and suggest why it is

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The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology

Cited by 1,416 publications

References 177 publications

Ecosystems, Ecosystem Processes and Global Change: Implications for Landscape Design

Ecosystems, Ecosystem Processes and Global Change: Implications for Landscape Design

Spatial Models of Interacting Populations

Ecosystem Analysis and the Governance of Natural Resources

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