Biogeography and landscape ecology: the way forward — gradients and graph theory

Abstract

Following the previous report on this subject, published in 2007, there has been a very substantial increase in publications relevant to landscape ecology and this is illustrated by the growth in citations for articles in the core journal Landscape Ecology over the period 2000—2007. The continuing ‘identity crisis’ of landscape ecology is described and recent literature in the field is then summarized under the following headings: ‘Landscape ecology and climate change research’; ‘Alternatives to fragmentation and the patch-based model — the links between pattern and process’; ‘Fragmentation research’; ‘Methodology and techniques in landscape ecology’; and ‘Connectivity and graph theoretical approaches’. The review concludes that landscape ecology now represents one important focus within biogeography, linked to ecological biogeography, and takes its place alongside other key foci, including macroecology, palaeoecology and soil science/pedology. Nevertheless, both physical and human geographers still need to embrace landscape ecology even more enthusiastically than they have up until now.