assemblage integrity may become more significant in conservation. This is because taxa may be conserved across landscape levels, if not at local levels. Land change modeling Land change modeling is an application of landscape ecology designed to predict future changes in land use. Land change models are used in urban planning, geography, GIS, and other disciplines to gain a clear understanding of the course of a landscape. In recent years, much of the Earth's land cover has changed rapidly, whether from deforestation or the expansion of urban areas. Relationship to other disciplines Landscape ecology has been incorporated into a variety of ecological subdisciplines. For example, it is closely linked to land change science, the interdisciplinary of land use and land cover change and their effects on surrounding ecology. Another recent development has been the more explicit consideration of spatial concepts and principles applied to the study of lakes, streams, and wetlands in the field of landscape limnology. Seascape ecology is a marine and coastal application of landscape ecology. In addition, landscape ecology has important links to application-oriented disciplines such as agriculture and forestry. In agriculture, landscape ecology has introduced new options for the management of environmental threats brought about by the intensification of agricultural practices. Agriculture has always been a strong human impact on ecosystems. In forestry, from structuring stands for fuelwood and timber to ordering stands across landscapes to enhance aesthetics, consumer needs have affected conservation and use of forested landscapes. Landscape forestry provides methods, concepts, and analytic procedures for landscape forestry. Landscape ecology has been cited as a contributor to the development of fisheries biology as a distinct biological science discipline, and is frequently incorporated in study design for wetland delineation in hydrology. It has helped shape integrated landscape management. Lastly, landscape ecology has been very influential for progressing sustainability science and sustainable development planning. For example, a recent study assessed sustainable urbanization across Europe using evaluation indices, country-landscapes, and landscape ecology tools and methods. Landscape ecology has also been combined with population genetics to form the field of landscape genetics, which addresses how landscape features influence the population structure and gene flow of plant and animal populations across space and time and on how the quality of intervening landscape, known as "matrix," influences spatial variation. After the term was coined in 2003, the field of landscape genetics had expanded to over 655 studies by 2010, and continues