Everybody is interested in his or her surroundings. They provide shelter, food, and hopefully, comfort. The characteristics of an animal's surroundings are usually capsulized under the broad term of ‘habitat.’ As reviewed elsewhere (e.g., Morrison et al., 1992, pp. 3–15), the study of habitat is a central theme of most ecological investigations. In fact, a central dogma in wildlife biology is the equating of management with ‘habitat management’ (e.g., Shaw, 1985, p. 29).
Not until the 1950s, however, did ecologists begin to formalize ‘habitat’ into a somewhat organized theoretical framework. This framework has slowly developed over the past 3–4 decades, but involves many approaches, numerous qualifying assumptions, and an extremely diverse empirical base.
The habitat concept is being used in a variety of both popular and scientific contexts. This wide and popular use has, however, led to much misuse and misunderstanding by both researchers and land managers. This is because the size,...
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© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Morrison, M.L. (1999). Habitat and habitat destruction. In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_165
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_165
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