Landscape dynamics in Farmland

Farm landscapes are a product and a part of human culture. They also are functioning ecological systems. Landscape ecologists are interested in synthesizing a holistic view of this common environment. In this review the dynamic nature of the farm landscape is introduced through examples of small mammal populations, distribution and abundance of birds, ecological effects of matter moving to and from organisms and the forces of human intellectual activities such as politics and economics. This wide range of topics over which landscape ecology attempts its synthesis produces some conceptual and technical problems which are characteristic of this new field. Prominent among them are questions of heterogeneity and scale in both space and time.