ABSTRACT
Biodiversity declines are due in large part to anthropogenic changes in habitats that accumulate over time and space to have landscape-level effects. These changes affect population and community processes at every measurable scale. The science of landscape ecology has provided tools for measuring and synthesizing information about these changes and their specific outcomes. The technical ability to detect, quantify, and analyze change from local to global extents has improved exponentially with the introduction of increasingly capable, spatially explicit data and computing systems. Measurement of habitat fragmentation, human modification of natural land cover, habitat connectivity, and algorithms for selecting new conservation areas have been applied to the problem of where and when to protect remaining biodiversity. In this chapter, we review these and other linkages between conservation biology, planning, implementation, and landscape ecology. We provide two specific cases where new research is needed: linkages between terrestrial and aquatic systems, and species distributions. Applications of landscape ecology to conservation planning – the where, why, when, and how questions of new conservation projects – will potentially improve the network of protected areas and managed lands that sustain them.
