Landscape Effects on Population Spatial Spread

Range expansions, biological invasions, and disease spread are all inherently spatial processes that involve the successful introduction or colonization, establishment, and dispersal of organisms (or their propagules) into new areas. Population spatial spread thus involves the interaction of both dispersal and demography with landscape structure. This chapter begins by exploring landscape effects on species’ range shifts and the extent to which species can shift their distributions in response to future land-use and climate-change scenarios. Next, the chapter evaluates the effect that landscape structure might have on invasive spread, including an overview of spatial models that are used to predict whether, when, and how fast an invasive species is likely to spread. The chapter concludes with a discussion of disease spread in a landscape context (landscape epidemiology), which involves the study of how pathogens, vectors, and hosts interact with environmental heterogeneity to influence the incidence and persistence of disease in an area.