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Feedbacks between Organisms and Ecosystem Processes

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Learning Landscape Ecology

Conclusions

In this lab you have seen and used different techniques for analyses of the ef-fects of landscape structure and ecosystem function on organisms as well as the feedbacks that organisms have on the structure and function of ecosys-tems and landscapes. Both modeling and direct observation of organism dis-tribution and landscape structure and function are important tools in this en-deavor. There are numerous other examples in the literature; however, most work of this sort is conducted in the field (or in a model parameterized with field data) rather than in the laboratory. Nevertheless, laboratory data can also be useful to understand some of the finer-scale mechanisms that may be driving a particular system. While it may seem intuitively obvious that or-ganisms can influence ecosystem processes and landscape structure, much work is still needed to understand the mechanisms behind these effects.

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Wallace, L.L., Gray, S.T. (2002). Feedbacks between Organisms and Ecosystem Processes. In: Gergel, S.E., Turner, M.G. (eds) Learning Landscape Ecology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-21613-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-21613-8_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-95254-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-21613-3

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