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Special Sessions at US-IALE 2001

Top 10 List for Landscape Ecology in the 21 Century
Special Session organized by Jianguo (Jingle) Wu

Scaling Issues Related to Ecological and Hydrological Landscape Analyses
Special Session organized by K. Bruce Jones and Iris A. Goodman

The premises and problems with spatial analysis in landscape ecology
Special Session organized by Marie-Josee Fortin and Maria Miriti

Complexity Theory and Ecological Applications
Special Session organized by G. Darrel Jenerette and Jianguo Wu

Landscape Ecology Comes to Town: An exploration of concepts, issues, strategies and case studies of applied urban landscape ecology
Special Session organized by Jack Ahern

Pattern and process in aquatic ecosystems: how patches and networks affect ecosystem function
Special Session organized by Lisa Dent and Elena Bennett

Landscape Fire Succession Modeling Special Session and Workshop
Special Session organized by Robert E. Keane and Sandra Lavorel

Pollinators in heterogeneous and dynamic landscapes
Special Session organized by Nancy E. McIntyre

Assessing Current and Future Regional Vulnerabilities
Special Session organized by Elizabeth (Betsy) R. Smith

Workshop: The Decline Of Agricultural Landscapes In The Phoenix Metropolitan Area: Should Anyone Care?
Organized by Laura Musacchio

Workshop: Visualizing The Equity Of Watershed Restoration Projects In The Phoenix Metropolitan Area: Potential Approaches For Community Decision-Making
Organized by Laura Musacchio
 
 



Top 10 List for Landscape Ecology in the 21 Century
Special Session organized by Jianguo (Jingle) Wu

In the past 20 years we have evidenced a rapid and exciting development of landscape ecology in theory and practice worldwide. As a new century begins to unfold, it is appropriate and timely to reflect the major achievements that have been made so far and identify the most important issues and challenges that lie ahead. Therefore, at the special session, "Top 10 List for Landscape Ecology in the 21 Century", a group of leading landscape ecologists are invited to present their top 10 lists in landscape ecology in the 21st century.  Hopefully, these lists together are indicative of the most important questions, challenges, and directions in theory and practice of landscape ecology. In addition to 10 presentations, several other ecologists worldwide will contribute to this special session by submitting their top 10 lists by mail.  I will summarize all the mail-in contributions in the introduction to the session.

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Scaling Issues Related to Ecological and Hydrological Landscape Analyses
Special Session organized by K. Bruce Jones and Iris A. Goodman

New remote sensing and GIS databases and advances in computing capability now make it possible to analyze landscape patterns across spatial areas ranging from a few meters to continents. For many practitioners, it is these technological capabilities — rather than observed or hypothesized scaling relationships — that often determine the scales at which analyses are conducted. In addition, technological advances can tend to promote the notion that landscape assessments should be carried out at the finest resolution that is technologically achievable, irrespective of the types of ecological or hydrological patterns and processes being investigated. Such approaches to the design and conduct of landscape assessments are contrary to the principle that different ecological and hydrological processes predominate at different scales of analysis. They also overlook the potential contribution of hierarchy theory to simplify the analysis of complex "middle-numbered" ecosystems.

This special session has two primary goals: (1) to present methods for determining if, in fact, scale matters for specific investigations of ecological and hydrological landscape processes, and (2) to synthesize existing findings regarding the existence of hierarchical structures and of scale dependencies for a variety of ecological and hydrological analyses. Presentations will emphasize results of cross-scale research and identify unresolved issues and scientific gaps.

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The premises and problems with spatial analysis in landscape ecology
Marie-Josee Fortin and Maria Miriti

Spatial analysis has recently become one of the most rapidly growing field in landscape ecology. This popularity is directly related to three factors: 1) a growing awareness among ecologists that it is important to include spatial structure in ecological thinking; 2) current landscapes are altered at an increasing rate which requires a constant re-evaluation of its spatial heterogeneity; and 3) the availability of software that perform spatial analyses. One major problem with use of spatial statistics software are that they are misused because: 1) ecologists have not been properly trained about the issues of spatial scales; and 2) ecologists do not realize that spatially autocorrelated data are not independent, and thus are violating distributional assumptions of parametric statistics. The purpose of this Symposium is first to highlight what are the premises and problems related to spatial analysis at the landscape scale and second to provide guidelines on how to perform such analyses correctly. The methodological and spatial statistics that will be presented during this Symposium will help ecologists have better understanding on how they should identify, quantify and interpret landscape spatial heterogeneity. Hence, it therefore highly relevant to the theme of the 16th US-IALE meeting on Pattern, Process, Scale, Hierarchy: Interactions in human dominated and Natural Landscapes.

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Complexity Theory and Ecological Applications
Special Session organized by G. Darrel Jenerette and Jianguo Wu

All disciplines, from physics, to biology, economics, engineering, and politics, are faced with the challenge of developing general principles to understand various complex phenomena. It is encouraging to note that in recent years we have evidenced rapid developments in the theories of complex systems. Ecological systems are among the most complex and exciting of all complex systems, and concepts such as chaos, phase transition, hierarchy, fractals, self-organized criticality, self-organization, and adaptation frequently appear ecological literature. However, ecologists have only recently begun to explore what complexity theory is and what its potential implications are for ecology. Landscape ecology since its inception has studied the interactions between spatial patterns and ecological processes in terms of heterogeneity, scaling and hierarchy. These have also been key concerns for understanding general complexity. We see a natural interface particularly between this ecological discipline and the developing theories of complexity. Landscape ecologists are uniquely suited to apply and develop complexity theories. This special session is to promote ecological investigations and applications of complexity theory. We will have several leading scientists addressing theories of complexity and their applications in ecology.

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Landscape Ecology Comes to Town: An exploration of concepts, issues, strategies and case studies of applied urban landscape ecology
Special Session organized by Jack Ahern

Landscape ecology is beginning to influence urban planning and design activities worldwide. In some contexts, urban expansion is extreme, causing an urgent need for proactive protection. In other, more mature urban contexts, other challenges exist to move towards a more sustainable condition with respect to resource use, nutrient cycling, and restoration of biodiversity. In any context, the concepts, issues, and strategies present serious and complex challenges to apply landscape ecology to heterogeneous and dynamic urban environments. This session will explore a range of approaches to address these issues through a series of "case-based" project reviews presented by an international panel of landscape architect/planners. The session will include a panel discussion on the integrating themes and issues that cut-across the individual papers. The participants have agreed to collaborate and share their respective papers prior to the symposium to stimulate and inform the panel discussion.

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Pattern and process in aquatic ecosystems: how patches and networks affect ecosystem function
Special Session organized by Lisa Dent and Elena Bennett

"Most applications of landscape ecology to river systems have dealt with spatial patterns; very few studies have examined dynamic interactions; and there has been almost no work on functional processes in river corridors from a landscape perspective" (Ward 1999).

The effect of spatial pattern on ecosystem process is an emerging field of research with broad application to preservation and restoration of ecosystem services. There is a growing need to understand the functioning of aquatic systems from a spatially explicit perspective. Key questions are, how variable are ecosystem processes in aquatic ecosystems, and how do controls on processes operate across space? The unique shape of rivers and river systems emphasizes the role of both patches and networks in controlling material transport. This special session aims to bring together people working on the link between pattern and process in aquatic systems at many different scales, ranging from gravel bar-nutrient interactions, to stream-lake connections, to the effects of network configuration on sediment transport.

Lakes and streams are among the most highly impacted ecosystem types. As urbanization proceeds, they are a focus of human settlement and recreation. Structural modification of rivers and lakes is widespread, disrupting connections between patches and networks, and thus threatening key ecosystem processes. Work presented here concerning the effects of spatial pattern on aquatic ecosystem process will contribute to the knowledge base needed for informed management decisions.

In summary, this special session will examine pattern-process interactions in the context of aquatic ecosystem processes at different scales, with implications for landscape management.

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Landscape Fire Succession Modeling Special Session and Workshop
Special Session organized by Robert E. Keane and Sandra Lavorel

Landscape fire succession models (LFSM) are spatially explicit computer models that simulate the effects of fire on successional processes and landscape patterns. These models are being used for many purposes, such as 1) predicting landscape structure and composition under contrasting management strategies, 2) quantifying historical variability of pattern and process, 3) parameterizing coarse scale vegetation dynamics models, and 4) exploring the role of fire in landscape ecology. Many types of LFSM’s are being built by various modelers, from stochastic multiple pathway succession models to mechanistic biogeochemical tree-level models, which have unique advantages and disadvantages for specific applications. We propose a special session at the IALE 2001 conference in Tempe, Arizona to examine the diversity of LFSM’s for various applications and identify the roles of the various models for specific applications. We would solicit LFSM papers to fill a full day session at the conference (16 presentations) to represent the wide variety of LFSM approaches. Then, we propose a one-day workshop where these modelers would get together to design a web-based worksite for comparing and testing LFSM’s. This web site would provide 1) general users access to all models, 2) a standardized key that would allow a potential user to decide if a model is appropriate for a given application, 3) a set of spatial databases that contain all information for the simulation and testing of their model, and 4) a standardized database that allows modelers to post their simulation results for comparison with other model results. This workshop would be co-sponsored by GCTE and the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

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Pollinators in heterogeneous and dynamic landscapes
Nancy E. McIntyre

Animals that pollinate flowering plants are considered "keystone species," organisms that play extremely important roles in ecosystem functioning such that their absence would have more widespread and far-reaching effects than their abundance would indicate. The reduction or extirpation of pollinators could translate into a severe reduction in plant reproduction, which would in turn affect not only the plants but also seed-eating animals, herbivorous animals, predators of the herbivores, and so on in a trophic cascade. Although the importance of these relationships is acknowledged, shockingly little is known about how pollinator communities are affected by landscape-scale environmental changes, such as global climate change and urban development. This lack of knowledge, coupled with the ever-increasing scope of environmental changes, has been called "a major pollination crisis." There is thus a pressing need to obtain baseline information on how pollinators respond to landscape structure and changes to that structure. This special session will bring together people working on pollinators at the landscape scale, particularly emphasizing how both natural and anthropogenic forms of landscape heterogeneity affect pollinator numbers, community structure, and behavior.

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Assessing Current and Future Regional Vulnerabilities
Special Session organized by Elizabeth (Betsy) R. Smith

Population and economic growth in a region inevitably result in harm to ecosystems because of pollution, loss of habitat, and demands on natural resources. But which ecosystems are at the greatest risk from the sum total of these factors, and thus should be priorities for protection and restoration? Research presented in this special session illustrates the use of a landscape approach for identifying current and future ecological vulnerabilities across a region so that limited resources can be effectively targeted towards improving the sustainability of ecological systems. By focusing at the regional scale, we can provide a framework for improved decision-making at the regional down to local scale through the identification of areas where change is projected to change rapidly or where significant valued resources may be imperiled. Proactive management will be further enhanced by allowing evaluation of trade-offs associated with alternative policy decisions through future scenario development. Communication of these trade-offs will be improved by linking changes in environmental indicators to changes in socio-economic indicators.

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Workshop: The Decline Of Agricultural Landscapes In The Phoenix Metropolitan Area: Should Anyone Care?
Organized by Laura Musacchio

Speakers
Landscape ecological perspective -Laura Musacchio, ASU
National perspective-Frederick Steiner, ASU (confirmed)
Historical perspecitve — Katherine Crewe, ASU (confirmed)
Federal perspective — Jeff Schmidt, USDA-NRCS (confirmed)

Focus: The speakers will discuss the potential ramifications of the decline of agricultural landscapes in Phoenix since World War II.

Audience: Environmental planners and managers, landscape ecologists, policymakers, local officials, economists, agricultural specialists

Workshop: Visualizing The Equity Of Watershed Restoration Projects In The Phoenix Metropolitan Area: Potential Approaches For Community Decision-Making
Organized by Laura Musacchio

Speakers
Integrated models-Laura Musacchio, ASU
Public participation — Ruth Yabes, ASU (confirmed)
Open space planning- Joseph Ewan, ASU (confirmed)

Focus: The speakers will discuss the criteria used in the location and development of watershed restoration projects in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Audience: Environmental planners and managers, watershed managers, landscape ecologists, policymakers, local officials


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