Preface

Summary

We were curious. Our curiosity was not limited, but was as wide and horizonless as that of Darwin or Agassiz or Linnaeus or Pliny. We wanted to see everything our eyes would accommodate, to think what we could, and, out of our seeing and thinking, to build some kind of structure in modeled imitation of the observed reality.

(John Steinbeck)

I shudder to begin a book with this quote. I do not have any real hopes of meeting Steinbeck's goals nor, certainly, of matching his prose. It is important to note, however, that I am trying to give some kind of structure, albeit personal, based on observed reality, but for the most part on reality at second hand. I have worked in riparian landscapes in Iowa, Montana, and Utah, but in this book I primarily review the fairly large collection of scientific literature on riparian ecology from the perspective of landscape ecology. Certainly more than Newton, I stand on the shoulders of giants, and I have tried, perhaps to the extent of over-zealousness, to document their work in detail. The work is diverse, addressing themes from pollination biology to sediment deposition. I believe that landscape ecology can build a useful structure in modeled imitation of the observed reality because the various processes share a common spatial structure and real location. In the process of constructing this structure I hope also to provide some insights into just how useful a blueprint is landscape ecology for such construction.