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By Sharon K. Collinge, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of environmental studies (Foreword by Richard T.T. Forman)

Ask airline passengers what they see as they gaze out the window, and they will describe a fragmented landscape: a patchwork of desert, farmlands and developed neighborhoods. Once-contiguous forests are now subdivided; tallgrass prairies that extended for thousands of miles are now crisscrossed by highways and byways. Whether the result of naturally occurring environmental changes or the product of seemingly unchecked human development, fractured lands significantly impact the planet’s biological diversity.

In this book, Sharon K. Collinge defines fragmentation, explains its various causes, and suggests ways that we can put our lands back together. Researchers have been studying the ecological effects of dismantling nature for decades. In this book, Collinge evaluates this body of research, expertly synthesizing all that is known about the ecology of fragmented landscapes. Expanding on the traditional coverage of this topic, Collinge also discusses disease ecology, restoration, conservation and planning. A worthy successor to Richard T.T. Forman’s classic “Land Mosaics.”

“The earth is increasingly an archipelago of habitat fragments in a sea of human development. What have ecologists learned about the impact of this global change? How can conservationists cope with it? Sharon Collinge’s book answers these questions by intelligently synthesizing the burgeoning scientific literature on fragmentation and its effects.”

—Daniel Simberloff, University of Tennessee.