As the scale of environmental problems expands, ecology, the basic science of the environment, must then meet the challenge and expand the scale of research and management recommendations. Fortunately, during the past 50 years or so, ecology has emerged from its roots in biology to become a standalone discipline that integrates organisms, the abiotic environment, and human affairs. Thus, we see the emphasis moving from the species level to the ecosystem level on up to the landscape level that deals with complex systems such as large watersheds. Size does matter; big is different from little, because new properties emerge with an increase in scale.

An increase in problems with pests is a good example of the need to consider the bigger picture, rather than just continue trying to deal with pest species one at a time. A large agricultural landscape with conservation tillage, a diversity of crops, and lots of natural vegetation buffer strips separating crop fields has much less trouble with insect pests than a continuous monocultural landscape.

Most important of all, preservation of the life-support environment can only be accomplished on a large scale. For instance, protection of water quality and stream corridors cannot be achieved through local zoning but requires political and management action at the state, regional, national, and ultimately, the global levels.

Landscape ecology is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field. Its concepts, theories, and methods are uniquely relevant in addressing large-scale issues in natural resource management (e.g., biodiversity conservation, land-use planning). The contributors of this book effectively show how natural resource management can benefit from landscape ecology, and how landscape ecology can be advanced by tackling challenging problems in natural resource management.