| The characteristic, or natural, length scales of a spatially dynamic ecological landscape are the spatial scales at which the deterministic trends in the dynamic are most sharply in focus. Given recent development of techniques to determine the characteristic length scales (CLSs) of real ecological systems, I explore the potential for using CLSs to address three important and vexing issues in applied ecology, viz. (i) determining the optimum scales to monitor ecological systems, (ii) interpreting change in ecological communities, and (iii) ascertaining connectivity between species in complex ecologies. In summarizing the concept of characteristic length scales as system-level scaling thresholds, I emphasize that the primary CLS is, by definition, the... |
