Geoscience Reference
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Fig. 1.4. Highways, cities, and larger towns in Wyoming. the
two largest cities are cheyenne and casper, with populations
in 2012 of 62,000 and 58,000, respectively. cartography by
Ken Driese.
Another branch of ecology is landscape ecology. ecol-
ogists working at this scale commonly focus on large het-
erogeneous areas, for example, square miles of grasslands
and shrublands. 4 they are curious about how the land-
scape has changed in recent decades or centuries, and
how it might change in the future. Another goal is to
determine the causes and effects of different landscape
patterns. Aerial photographs, satellite images, and maps
are important tools for their work. the terms landscape
and ecosystem are sometimes used interchangeably. to
illustrate, the Yellowstone landscape made famous by the
artist thomas Moran in the 1870s is a mosaic of commu-
nities and is now often referred to as the Greater Yellow-
stone ecosystem (see chapter 15). the boundaries of an
ecosystem or landscape are established according to the
objectives of a study or management challenge. the area
included may be as small as a pond or as large as several
counties or states, or even continents.
ecology is a diverse science that fosters an improved
understanding of all the various forms of life in an area
and the ecosystems they inhabit. to facilitate ecologists'
work, diagrams are drawn to illustrate the plethora of
possible interactions, such as those illustrated in fig. 1.6.
Some of the drawings are similar to those prepared by
engineers, but there is a significant difference—natural
ecosystems were not designed and constructed by
humankind. Rather, they emerged after millions of
years of evolution and centuries of ecosystem develop-
ment. Much remains to be learned about the species
and processes that enable their long-term persistence.
 
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