An underlying theme of our research and teaching is a focus on landscape ecosystems (geographic ecosystems or “geoecosystems”) in addition to the organisms that are inseparable from them. We are interested in why native plants grow where they do, but our focus is always on whole ecosystems. We emphasize an ecosystem approach rather than a biological approach, in that we consider “ecology” to be “the study of ecosystems”, and we study them in the field as discrete, real places on the surface of the Earth. Plants and other organisms are interesting and useful in summarizing a particular study, but we consider them always in terms of their physical environment – geology, physiography, climate, and soil. This approach is pervasive in every research project we undertake. In the words of J. Stan Rowe: “What is important today is to change our understanding of the world, to focus on ecosystems rather than on the individual species and organisms that are part of them” (Rowe 1989).
