ABSTRACT

Understanding landforms and geomorphological processes is necessary to understanding the ecology of landscapes. Landforms effect the flow of energy and material that support life. Appreciating the influence of landforms and climate on soil, vegetation, and wildlife is a familiar bottom-up path to gaining an appreciation for landscape ecology. The shape of landforms is actively molded by plate tectonic volcanic and exogenous processes last derived ultimately from solar energy that is converted to heat energy mainly at the surface of the earth. Animal movement across two or more ecosystems is a landscape process involving a member of the biota moving across ecosystems transporting nutrients, and thus performing bottom-up functions and influencing plant communities, thus performing a top-down function. The geomorphic effects of animals encompassed their roles in eroding, transporting, and depositing the constituents of landforms, i.e., soil and rock.