From the Land to the Sea: What Can Landscape Ecology Do for the Study of Waterscapes?

Landscape ecology studies the processes that give rise to environmental heterogeneity, and the consequences of that environmental heterogeneity for ecological and evolutionary processes across a range of scales.  If we define a “landscape” to be a spatially heterogeneous area that is scaled to the process or organism of interest, we can then expand the study and application of landscape ecology to a diverse array of scapes, including riverscapes, lakescapes, and seascapes.   Despite the unfortunate name, landscape ecology provides a conceptual and theoretical framework, along with a suite of spatial analytical tools, that can be applied to the study of the relationship between pattern and process in all scapes, whether they be based on land or sea.   In this presentation, I will provide an overview of some of the concepts, landscape metrics, and spatial analytical approaches from landscape ecology that are likely to have the greatest utility for waterscape ecologists.  In turn, waterscape ecologists can help free landscape ecology from the perception that it is inexorably “landlocked.”