Looking at the Landscape

Land management traditionally has focused on site-specific activities that affect the functions and values, such as biotic diversity and nutrient cycling, of specific wetland communities. To better conserve wetland ecosystems, however, we need to go beyond their physical boundaries. We need to consider wetland ecosystem functions within a landscape context, a perspective that addresses the effects of disturbances to wetland ecosystem that do not necessarily originate within wetland communities. The scale at which disturbances affect wetland ecosystems is therefore enlarged to include the physical proximity to upland and aquatic systems and the ecological linkages between these systems and wetlands.