Landscape ecology might be defined best by its focus on the interplay between spatial pattern and process; specifically, how to characterize spatial pattern, where it comes from, why it matters, and how it changes through time. Thus, in this course, we will focus on the following:

• Detecting and characterizing landscape patterns. Finding the characteristic scale of spatial pattern; defining the elements of pattern; connectedness, fractal geometry, and percolating networks; and how these aspects of pattern are interrelated in landscapes, and how they vary.
• How patterns develop on landscapes. Including the three agents of pattern formation: the physical template of environmental constraints, biotic processes, and disturbance regimes.
• Implications of landscape pattern. This is the central set of questions in landscape ecology. We will focus on processes at three levels of organization: Populations and metapopulations, communities, and ecosystem processes.
• Landscape dynamics. How landscape patterns and processes change through time, including techniques for detecting, analyzing, or simulating landscape change; and modeling populations or communities in landscape mosaics (including spatially implemented metapopulation models).
• Landscape management. How humans approach the management of complex landscapes to achieve management objectives, including two themes central to ecology today: Conservation biology and ecosystem management.

Beyond these overall content goals, this course is intended to:

• Provide students with an opportunity to work and learn in an interdisciplinary environment;
• Provide students with an opportunity to engage in active, student-directed learning.
• Provide students with an opportunity to refine their written and oral communication skills.

WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE: This course will be primarily of interest to graduate students in the Natural Resources Conservation Department and Organismal and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) program, although students from a variety of other departments, including Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning (LARP), may benefit as well. To accomplish the course goals and objectives, we will use a project-based learning approach. Students will work in interdisciplinary teams on several group projects, and there will be a heavy emphasis on the use of computer models.

TEXT: Turner et al. 2001. Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice, Springer. Lecture notes by K. McGarigal; and assigned journal articles.

PREREQUISITES: Graduate standing in WFCON or OEB, or permission from instructor.