Which field studies pattern of landscape use and biodiversity in interacting ecosystems?

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Landscape ecology examines how the spatial arrangement of land covers and habitats influences ecological processes and biodiversity across interacting ecosystems. It looks at patterns of landscape use—where forests, fields, wetlands, and urban areas occur, how they border or connect, and how fragmentation, edges, and corridors affect where species live and how ecosystems function. This field combines geography with ecology to study how processes operate across different scales and how energy, nutrients, and organisms move among patches. The other choices describe related ideas but not the same integrated focus: conservation biology centers on protecting species and habitats; ecological models are tools for simulating processes; and the hydrologic cycle concerns water movement rather than landscape-level biodiversity patterns.