School of Resource & Environment, East China Normal University, Open Lab. of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200062, China
Scales, as the critical issue in ecology, exist in any ecological process in forms of temporal and spatial scales, and play a important role in ecology. This can be due to two reasons:one is the demand of understanding pattern and process on larger scales when solving many global environmental problems, while past ecological research mainly on small scales, and another is the conclusion that an given ecological problem lies on the scale selected in the study. But there remain a lot of problems in the study of ecological scales, such as the confusion between scales and some related concepts, the lack of a set of systemic and perfect methods for scale identification, and for scaling as well. This paper clarified the exact meaning of scales firstly, and looked back to the development history and importance of ecological scale andlysis. Next it discussed the relations between scales and hierarchy theory, as well as scale and pattern. In addition, it also discussed the methods and the developing trend of identifying scales and scaling.
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