Abstract
Dominant landscape-ecological models either focus on the hierarchical organization of a single phenomenon or describe relations at a single hierarchical level. We proposed the tool MALS (Multiscale Analysis of Landscape Structure) to reveal multiple independent hierarchies based on the interactions between properties of relief, soils and vegetation and tested it on the example of the middle-taiga landscape in European Russia. Morphological properties of soils and abundance of plant species were measured in operational territorial units. Multidimensional scaling was used to reveal ecological drivers. Combinations of landforms from DEM were used to describe spatial heterogeneity in the higher-order geosystems. Response surface regression was applied to relate soils and vegetation to each other and to relief of several hypothetic higher-order geosystems. Spatial extent of a higher-order geosystem was determined from the series of equations. Then we compared contributions of external (inter-level) and internal (intra-level) interactions to spatial variability of soils and vegetation. Herbs, low shrubs, and morphologic soil properties turned out to be controlled mainly by the geosystems with the linear size 1200 m, while trees, shrubs, and sediments – by the geosystems with size 2000 m. From 2 to 5 levels of the higher-order geosystems should be considered in order to obtain the proper explanation of spatial heterogeneity.
Highlights
The Interest in the multiscale organization of landscapes is encouraged by the necessity to translate information among hierarchy levels (O’Neill 1988; Wu & David 2002; Burnett & Blaschke 2003; Zhang et al 2013)
We deliberately focused on low-resolution (400 m) digital elevation model (DEM) to omit from examination fine details of relief and to concentrate on mesoscale landforms and the related contrasts in soil and vegetation cover
response surface regression (RSR) modeling indicated that 60-80% of variance of most raw field data was explained by the coordinates on axes nos. 1
Summary
The Interest in the multiscale organization of landscapes is encouraged by the necessity to translate information among hierarchy levels (O’Neill 1988; Wu & David 2002; Burnett & Blaschke 2003; Zhang et al 2013). The key idea of the concept is that each property of a landscape reflects the superposition of effects generated at various hierarchical levels. Limitations upon the interactions between geocomponents are imposed by the differences both in characteristic space scale and time scale inherent to phenomena and processes. Interactions can occur only between those natural phenomena that have comparable time and space scales (Delcourt et al 1983; Puzachenko 1986; Shugart 1999). To avoid uncritical application of the famous metaphor “everything is linked to everything” the concept of partial geocomplexes, or partial geosystems, was developed in physical geography (Neef 1967, Sochava 1978, Solon 1999) as a tool to consider strong linkages between groups of certain properties with similar space and time scales
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