Landscape Ecology-Concepts and Theories.

Landscape ecology is an interdisciplinary field that has been rapidly developing in the past few decades. New ideas and perspectives that emphasize spatial heterogeneity, hierarchical linkages, and interactions between pattern, process, and scale have given the field an unique and significant identity. This paper is intended to review and synthesize the recent advances in landscape ecology, presenting a set of core concepts and theories, which include scale, pattern-process, spatial heterogeneity, edge effect, hierarchy theory, patch dynamics, patch-corridor-matrix model, island biogeographic theory, metapopulation theory, landscape connectivity, neutral models, and percolation theory.