LINKING RESTORATION AND LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY

Landscape ecology focuses on questions typically addressed over broad spatial scales. A landscape approach embraces spatial heterogeneity, c onsisting of a number of ecosystems and/or landscape structures of dif ferent types, as a central theme. Such studies may aid restoration eff orts in a variety of ways, including (1) provision of better guidance for selecting reference sites and establishing project goals and (2) s uggestions for appropriate spatial configurations of restored elements to facilitate recruitment of flora/fauna. Likewise, restoration effor ts may assist landscape-level studies, given that restored habitats, p ossessing various patch arrangements or being established among landsc apes of varying diversity and conditions of human alteration, can prov ide extraordinary opportunities for experimentation over a large spati al scale. Restoration studies can facilitate the rate of information g athering for expected changes in natural landscapes for which introduc tion of landscape elements may be relatively slow. Moreover, data coll ected from restoration studies can assist in validation of dynamic mod els of current interest in landscape ecology. We suggest that restorat ion and landscape ecology have an unexplored mutualistic relationship that could enhance research and application of both disciplines.