Ecological Processes in the Time and Space of Farmland Mosaics

Abstract

The research described here is illustrative, but not representative of landscape ecology today. The investigations presented depict processes at several time and space scales, and obtain parameter values for their elements. This permits parallel modeling of the dynamics of a species in a dynamic landscape (Merriam, 1988). My approach is specialized and focuses on the farmed landscape. Early studies concentrated on small forest areas as residual fragments of formerly nearly continuous, although probably very heterogeneous, forest (Wegner and Merriam, 1979; Middleton and Merriam, 1981). My colleagues and I also have given priority to wooded fencerows that provide a variable network through a matrix of cultivated land (Figure 1), and thus potentially interconnect woodlots (Middleton and Merriam, 1983; Merriam, 1984; Henderson et al., 1985). These fencerows arose primarily by neglect of uncultivated margins of fields after fences were built. Fencerow vegetation here rarely includes relict strips of forest.