Landscape limnology is the spatially explicit study of lakes, streams, and wetlands as they interact with freshwater, terrestrial, and human landscapes to determine the effects of pattern on ecosystem processes across temporal and spatial scales. Limnology is the study of inland water bodies inclusive of rivers, lakes, and wetlands; landscape limnology seeks to integrate all of these ecosystem types. The terrestrial component represents spatial hierarchies of landscape features that influence which materials, whether solutes or organisms, are transported to aquatic systems; aquatic connections represent how these materials are transported; and human activities reflect features that influence how these materials are transported as well as their quantity and temporal dynamics.

Foundation

The core principles or themes of landscape ecology provide the foundation for landscape limnology. These ideas can be synthesized into a set of four landscape ecology themes that are broadly applicable to any aquatic ecosystem type, and that consider the unique features of such ecosystems. A landscape limnology framework begins with the premise of Thienemann (1925). Wiens (2002): freshwater ecosystems can be considered patches. As such, the location of these patches and their placement relative to other elements of the landscape is important to the ecosystems and their processes. Therefore, the four main themes of landscape limnology are:

Contributions to other fields

Findings from landscape limnology research are contributing to many facets of aquatic ecosystem research, management, and conservation. Landscape limnology is especially relevant for geographical areas with thousands of ecosystems (i.e. lake-rich regions of the world), in situations with a range of human disturbances, or when considering lakes, streams, and wetlands that are connected to other such ecosystems. For example, landscape limnology perspectives have contributed to the development of nutrient criteria for lakes, formation of classification systems that can be used to monitor the health of aquatic ecosystems, understanding ecosystem responses to environmental stressors, or explaining biogeographic patterns of community composition.