Focused assessment of scale-dependent vegetation pattern

Abstract

Ecological processes frequently occur at multiple spatial scales simultaneously. For example, fires imprint the landscape at a variety of spatial scales, from small areas of high burn intensity due to patchy surface fuels, to large stands within fires that escape conflagration entirely (Fig. 7.1). These types of complex disturbances can increase environmental heterogeneity and thus species diversity by creating a variety- of microhabitats and by increasing patch diversity (Romme and Knight 1982; Christensen 1985; Denslow 1985; Pickett and White 1985; Turner et al. 1998). The flow of organisms, genes, and populations provides another excellent example of scale-dependent ecological processes (see Chap. 8). © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.