Urban Landscape Ecology: Past, Present, and Future - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 39

Fig. 3.3 The top 15 most-cited papers published in Landscape Ecology (data from the ISI web of
science, http://apps.webofknowledge.com/ ; accessed on December 5, 2012): a ranking by the
total number of citations, b ranking by the number of citations per year, and c temporal changes
in the number of citations (5-year moving average values used here to smooth out annual
fluctuations)
or deemphasizing ''function.'' A background assumption in landscape ecology is
that landscape structural patterns are related to ecological processes and ecosystem
functions. In other words, the ultimate goal of analyzing spatial patterns is to get to
the underlying processes or functions—pattern analysis is a ''means'' not an
''end.'' Also, both landscape structural and functional attributes have ''spatial
patterns'' which are important for ecological understanding and management.
A review of all the publications in the field's flagship journal—Landscape
Ecology—since its establishment in 1987 confirms that landscape ecology is a
spatially explicit interdisciplinary science (Figs. 3.2 and 3.3 ). First, the most
commonly used terms in landscape ecology are those that are directly related to
spatial heterogeneity or spatial pattern, including heterogeneity, pattern, frag-
mentation, disturbance, and connectivity (Fig. 3.2 a). The frequent use of words
like habitat, conservation, fragmentation, and connectivity reflects the predomi-
nance of biodiversity conservation, as a research topic, in landscape ecological
studies. Another trend in the frequency of word occurrence is that urbanization,