Landscape Ecology

Eric W. Sanderson, Ph.D.
ADJ ASSOC RES SCIENTIST
Wildlife Conservation Society

six Thursday evenings, 6 pm - 8 pm, beginning April 11, 2002

Landscape ecology is the science of understanding what happens to a place when you rearrange ecosystems, when you move a river from one place to another, or when you chop down a forest in one place or let it grow back over the hill. Landscape ecology is the study of how the arrangement of ecosystems on the land or in the sea influences the organisms that live there, and how those organisms and human beings in turn influence the landscape. Because human modifications to natural systems often taken the form of rearrangments, whether through habitat destruction, differential intensities of hunting, introduction of new species, and/or modification of natural disturbance regimes, landscape ecology has become an increasingly important in conservation practice. In this course we will examine basic principles of landscape ecology and study how conservation biologists apply these principles through eight case studies. Students will be asked to think about landscapes that they care about and to write about the ecological dynamics that dictate their form, function, and conservation.