Working Across Scales

Many of the challenges environmental professionals face require that they understand what is happening at their study location, as well as how that is influenced by conditions across a broader landscape. Similarly, they must consider how conditions differed before and how they will continue to change in the future. This disconnect between what can currently be measured and the broader inference we need to make requires that environmental professionals know how to make inference across scales. In this chapter, we explore the types of scale-related issues often faced by environmental professionals and present frameworks to navigate the complexities confronted when working across scales of both time and space.