Conservation biology -- using concepts from traditional resource management and modern population biology to preserve biological diversity -- has emerged as one of the most important areas of ecology In order to really understand the problems of decreasing diversity and the solutions to maintaining it, the attention of ecologists must be focused on larger spatial and temporal scales than they are used to. The book discusses methods and statistical techniques that can be used to analyze spatial patterns in geographic populations. These techniques incorporate ideas from fractal geometry to develop measures of geographic range fragmentation, and can be used to ask questions regarding the conservation of biodiversity.
