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Ecosystems and Spatial Patterns

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Ecological Systems

Abstract

Ecological processes such as forest disturbances act on ecosystems at multiple spatial and temporal scales to generate complex spatial patterns. These patterns in turn influence ecosystem dynamics and have important consequences for ecosystem sustainability. Analysis of ecosystem spatial structure is a first step toward understanding these dynamics and the uncertain interactions among processes. There are many spatial statistics available to describe and test spatial pattern within ecosystems and to infer the character of the processes that generated them. Indeed, improving understanding of the processes that create spatial pattern is a central objective of spatial pattern analysis. In addition to standard tests of spatial autocorrelation and patch structure, methods for multi-scale decomposition of spatial data and identification of stationarity are necessary to determine the key spatial scales at which the processes operate and affect ecosystems and to identify meaningful spatial subunits within larger contexts. Finally, tools for identifying ecosystem boundaries are also important to monitor boundary movement and changes in local ecosystem characteristics through time.

This chapter was originally published as part of the Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology edited by Robert A. Meyers. DOI:10.1007/978-1-4419-0851-3

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Abbreviations

Disturbance:

A spatial process or event that reverts forest vegetation to early successional stages typically altering forest structure and composition.

Ecotone:

A region of interface between two communities, ecosystems, or biogeographic regions.

Legacy:

A persisting spatial feature or pattern that was generated by a historical disturbance. Legacies can constrain the spatial dynamics of contemporary disturbances.

Multi-scale analysis:

A method of spatial analysis that looks at the relative contributions of different scales of spatial pattern to a single observed spatial pattern.

Pattern:

A repeatable and identifiable feature in a spatial context.

Scale:

An attribute of a spatial process or data used to represent that process that describes its spatial dimensions. Scale includes elements of grain, extent, and thematic resolution.

Spatial autocorrelation:

The degree of correlation of a variable and itself as a function of the spatial distances among sample points.

Stationarity:

A feature of a spatial process in which the mean and variance of a process is consistent across the extent of a study area.

Variography:

A geostatistical modeling tool for describing spatial variance and semivariance as a function of spatial distance among pairs of points.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by a Killam Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta to PMAJ and an NSERC Discovery grant to MJF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Patrick M. A. James

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marie-Josée Fortin

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  1. Patrick M. A. James
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  2. Marie-Josée Fortin
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Correspondence to Patrick M. A. James .

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  1. , Environmental Systems Analysis Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, 6700 AA, Netherlands

    Rik Leemans

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James, P.M.A., Fortin, MJ. (2013). Ecosystems and Spatial Patterns. In: Leemans, R. (eds) Ecological Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5755-8_7

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