home     help     resources   Your Ecology IQ | Choose Your Critters Willow talks about Adirondack species. What tool has helped ecologists expand their view? Clearly, the Adirondack Park covers a huge area. Any place with almost ten thousand lakes must stretch across many a mile. What are the implications of this size for the people who live and work in the park? What are the implications for people like you who want to better understand the area? In order to understand the needs of wildlife in the Adirondacks (or elsewhere), you need to understand the concept of ecological scale. A millipede researcher might focus on a patch of forest the size of a dinner plate, while another biologist might study an area the size of Rhode Island. These researchers are focusing on different scales. Do the sorting activity below to test your understanding of this concept. What do landscape ecologists do?     They study predator-prey and other individual species interactions.     They look at how the structure of the land, (e.g., topography, water, forest cover) and human uses, affect wildlife populations.     They design landscapes for human use with animal's needs in mind.     • Give two examples of a population within your community. • Describe an ecosystem in your own words. • Imagine you're a scientist. What would be different about studying an organism vs. studying a landscape? • Based on this activity, what do you think a "landscape" is?     Download field notebook questions. © 2004 Wildlife Conservation Society.