Landscape Ecology - house journal of IALE

The Association works in close collaboration with Springer to produce the major journal in the field, Landscape Ecology . This journal, first time published in 1984, became the flagship journal in the rapidly developing fields of ecology and sustainability science of landscapes. The journal focuses on highly inter- and transdisciplinary studies, aggregating expertise from biological, geophysical, and social sciences to explore the formation, dynamics and consequences of spatial heterogeneity in natural and human-dominated landscapes. Members get free access to the journal. Below you'll find the most recentc articles published in Landscape Ecology:
Latest Results | ||
The latest content available from Springer | ||
UAV-based aerial imagery to identify high quality habitats for the endangered Bog Fritillary butterfly | ||
Freitag, 04. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Land use intensification has led to a reduction of valuable open habitats over the past decades. The remaining habitats are mostly small and geographically isolated from each other. Bogs and wetland habitats have suffered particularly strongly under habitat destruction and reduction of habitat quality. The Bog Fritillary butterfly Boloria eunomia occurs on little-used wet meadows and bogs, and exists today mostly in small remnant populations in Central Europe... | ||
Living with the enemy: the return of an apex predator is associated with habitat shifts in a common but rapidly declining prey population | ||
Donnerstag, 03. Juli 2025 | ||
Context The recovery of some apex predators has led to concerns for endangered prey that may have developed risky habitat selection tactics during predator-free eras. Environmental heterogeneity affects predator–prey coexistence, but spatial redistribution of prey has rarely been studied. A predator–prey system with white-tailed eagles and common eiders provides a unique opportunity to study the effect of returning predators on an abundant but declining prey population... | ||
A long-term reinvestigation using camera traps reveals the resilience of mammalian communities in protected areas of the Maputaland Conservation Unit, South Africa | ||
Donnerstag, 03. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Repeated surveys to investigate mammalian assemblages at the landscape level are crucial to understanding how natural ecosystems function and regulate over time. Objectives We assessed mammalian species richness and occupancy changes across selected protected areas (PAs) in northern KwaZulu-Natal in the Maputaland Conservation Unit, South Africa. Methods We collected data... | ||
Understanding the hydrological and landscape connectivity of lakes | ||
Donnerstag, 03. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Connectivity is a key property of water, enabling the flow of energy, material and individuals within and between sites. Climate and land use changes can profoundly modify connectivity, yet few studies have quantified the patterns in connectivity among lakes at national scales. Objectives Our objectives were: i) to examine relationships between a broad range of lake connectivity metrics, ii) to evaluate how lake... | ||
Scale-dependent habitat relationships of a semi-aquatic mammal in a highly regulated freshwater ecosystem | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Understanding what factors influence species occupancy in human-modified landscapes is a central theme in ecology. This is particularly vital for freshwater semi-aquatic organisms that occupy both terrestrial and aquatic environments that have often undergone severe habitat alteration from flow modification, water abstraction, and human encroachment. A greater understanding of their habitat and hydrological requirements is needed to predict how further changes to... | ||
Using old fields for new purposes: ecosystem service outcomes of restoring marginal agricultural land to forests | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Human activities, particularly intensive agriculture, have caused significant environmental degradation, reduced ecosystem diversity, and increased vulnerability to global change. Recent international policies, such as the Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30 × 30 target, advocate for nature-based solutions (NbS) such as ecological restoration to address these impacts. In agricultural landscapes, however, there are concerns that restoration may impact food... | ||
DynamicPATCH: method and software for spatially explicit dynamic patch transition characterization | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Decades of research have used spatial pattern metrics at time points, such as those in FRAGSTATS, to measure the net change of landscape configuration and composition during time intervals. However, metrics at time points fail to quantify a time interval’s gross change, which can be substantially larger than net change between two time points. The field of landscape ecology has lacked a conceptual framework and accompanying software to characterize patterns of gross... | ||
Correction to: Hydrodynamics, elevation, and restoration history structure intertidal oyster recruitment | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Interannual dynamics of China’s wild elephant habitat revealed by Landsat-based time series land cover and meta-analysis derived habitat preferences | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context A long-term and highly dynamic understanding of terrestrial habitats is of extreme importance for enhancing wildlife conservation, habitat management, human-wildlife conflict mitigation in a timely manner. Currently, however, fine-resolution, multi-decade, and inter-annual habitat mapping remains rare due to high costs and data scarcity of wildlife presence/absence data. Moreover, the existing land cover datasets used for habitat mapping have high uncertainty in... | ||
Impact of the morphology of logged areas on medium and large mammal communities in forests | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context The morphology of logged areas (MLA) can impact medium and large mammal habitat. Assessing MLAs with landscape metrics facilitates sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation. Objectives We quantified MLAs and assessed their impacts on medium and large mammals. Methods We assessed mammal occurrence using camera traps in 24 logged and 26 unlogged sites in South... | ||
Multi-temporal analysis of urban vegetation using deep learning and 3D reconstruction | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Urban green spaces play a vital role in enhancing environmental quality and human well-being. However, traditional assessment methods, such as the green view index, primarily quantify green coverage while neglecting vegetation diversity, color richness, and seasonal dynamics, which are critical for urban livability. Objectives This study develops a multi-temporal and multi-perspective analysis framework for urban green... | ||
Multiple small patches have higher taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity as well as more clustered assemblages than fewer large patches of comparable area | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context The long-standing SLOSS debate concerns whether several small patches (SS) or a single or fewer large patches (SL) better support biodiversity. Recent literature reviews and meta-analyses highlight the importance of small patches, yet much of this focus has centered on taxonomic diversity, overlooking phylogenetic and functional dimensions that offer deeper insights into community structure. Objectives We investigated the... | ||
Monitoring bush encroachment in Bisley Nature Reserve using RapidEye and PlanetScope data | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context The woody vegetation encroachment into natural grasslands is a significant global concern in nature reserves and other protected and conserved landscapes. Bush encroachment remains one of the major contributors of land degradation and landscape alterations. The phenomenon adversely affects biodiversity, conservation efforts, landscape productivity and recreational value. Objectives To understand the progression and threat... | ||
Predicting carbon storage in North American maritime boreal forests under combined disturbances | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Understanding how forest disturbances, such as fire and herbivory, affect carbon storage across the landscape can help inform forest management and disturbance mitigation. However, this is made difficult by uncertainties in carbon predictions and limited records of disturbance histories. Objectives Our objectives were to predict carbon stocks and predict where disturbances have created open forest patches across the study... | ||
Using AI enhanced agent-based models to support management of wild populations | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Managing wild populations in rapidly changing, human-dominated landscapes requires models that accommodate complex interactions among climate, land use, disease, and evolution. Agent-based models (ABMs) are well suited to this task but are often difficult to parameterize, calibrate, and interpret at management-relevant scales. Objectives We discuss how artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques, including machine-learning... | ||
Energy landscape and life-history requirements shape habitat use in an extreme soaring specialist | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Understanding how animals respond to the energy landscape is crucial for elucidating the mechanisms of habitat selection, movement strategies, and connectivity dynamics. However, assessing the responses of highly mobile and long-lived species is challenging, as movement behaviors related to distinct life-history requirements may operate at extreme spatial and temporal scales. Objectives We combined movement and genetic... | ||
Semi-natural habitats and their contribution to crop productivity through pollination and pest control: a systematic review | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Semi-natural habitats (SNHs) play a vital role in delivering key ecosystem services, such as crop pollination and biological pest control, which are essential to support agricultural productivity. However, the evidence of the economic benefits of SNHs is scattered, and their impacts on productivity in agricultural landscapes are not well understood, limiting their adoption and integration into farming practices and agricultural policies... | ||
UAS-based geomorphic change detection of incised montane meadow stream channels with low-tech process-based restoration treatments | ||
Dienstag, 01. Juli 2025 | ||
Context Montane meadows play an important hydrologic role in headwater catchments, but past land use has largely degraded their condition. Low-tech restoration methods, such as beaver dam analogs (BDAs), are increasingly used to support recovery of incised streams by promoting key geomorphic processes. However, there remains a need for studies that leverage UAS for monitoring low-tech restoration treatments in incised meadow systems. Objectives... | ||
Climate buffering effects of western Canadian boreal lakes: the effect of lake size and depth on shoreline and nearshore forests | ||
Montag, 23. Juni 2025 | ||
Context Lakes can provide thermal refugia effects by buffering shoreline and inland temperatures, potentially delaying forest transitions. However, this effect has not been quantified for the majority of boreal Canada lakes, which are often excluded in general circulation model predictions of climate, thus potentially underestimating the effects of lake-mediated buffering. Objectives Here, we quantify the effects of varying lake... | ||
A framework for creating urban growth boundaries that integrate ecological protection and disaster risk reduction | ||
Freitag, 20. Juni 2025 | ||