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What are the main principles of landscape ecology?

From the descriptions you read in 'What is landscape ecology', we can elicit a range of principles that landscape ecology focuses on.

• the distribution patterns of landscape elements or ecosystems
• flows of animals, plants, energy, minerals, water among landscape elements (landscape functioning and processes)
• ecological changes in landscape mosaic over time
• understanding the whole
• maintaining quality of landscapes

Landscape ecology considers the number, type, and spatial arrangement of landscape elements, and the effect that this spatial and temporal heterogeneity has on species. This is necessary to understand how and why they persist or decline from a particular area.

It involves investigations over large areas so GIS and remote sensing offer great potential to study and perform analysis for landscape ecological studies.

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