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CAS Workshop on Ecosystem Succession Theory and Practice of Ecological Restoration Landscape ecological principles for nature
conservation and ecological restoration
Wu Jianguo (Department
of Plant Biology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1601,
USA) Abstract: Ecosystems are spatially heterogeneous, complex adaptive systems.
A grand challenge to ecological theory and applications today
is to effectively deal with spatial heterogeneity and self-organizing
complexity of natural and human-dominated ecological systems.
Traditional paradigms in ecology have been based on the
assumptions of equilibrium, homogeneity, and determinism, and often
failed to guide conservation and restoration practices.
Conservation biology and restoration ecology are
“crisis-oriented” fields of study, with explicit goals as
conserving and restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services.
However, to reach these goals the landscape context and spatial
interactions of populations and ecosystems must be considered.
Landscape ecology, as the study of the interactions between
spatial pattern and ecological processes across a range of scales,
represents a new ecological paradigm for nature conservation and
ecological restoration, which emphasizes spatial heterogeneity, scale,
hierarchical linkages and organization, pattern and process
interactions, landscape connectivity and thresholds, disturbances, and
human activities. In a recent synthesis paper, Wu and Hobbs (2002) identified
six key issues and 10 research priorities in landscape ecology.
The six key issues are: (1) interdisciplinarity or
transdisciplinarity, (2) integration between basic research and
applications, (3) Conceptual and theoretical development, (4)
education and training, (5) international scholarly communication and
collaborations, and (6) outreach and communication with the public and
decision makers. The top
10 research topics are: (1) ecological flows in landscape mosaics, (2)
causes, processes, and consequences of land use and land cover change,
(3) nonlinear dynamics and landscape complexity, (4) scaling, (5)
methodological development, (6) relating landscape metrics to
ecological processes, (7) integrating humans and their activities into
landscape ecology, (8) optimization of landscape pattern, (9)
landscape sustainability, and (10) data acquisition and accuracy
assessment. In this
presentation, I will discuss the new developments in landscape
ecology, and then present a set of principles that are particularly
relevant to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and
ecosystem processes. These
principles are closely related to several concepts and theories in
landscape ecology, including edge effect, patch dynamics, percolation
and phase transition, complex adaptive systems, hierarchy theory, and
scaling theory. Key words:
landscape ecology; conservation biology; restoration ecology; pattern
and process; scale
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