In this lecture I learned about the fundamental contribution of landscape metrics and how they influence the studies of landscape ecology. Landscape ecology is defined as the study of the reciprocal interactions
between spatial pattern and ecological processes that occur on
landscapes. One important concept that influences the relationship between ecology and landscape is spatial autocorrelation. Spatial autocorrelation is defined as the measure of how much close objects are in comparison with other close objects. Specifically, positive spatial autocorrelation is when similar values cluster together in a map and negative spatial autocorrelation is when dissimilar values cluster together in a map.
The lesson also addresses how spatial effects affect ecological data. For instance, climate affects the growth and distributions of tree species. Topography also influences local climate such as rain and radiation due to elevation, slope, and aspect. Other spatial effects mentioned were biotic interactions such as competition creating spatial patterns, human land use impacts, and other disturbance processes such as natural disasters like fires and floods.