The complexity of ecological systems is a major challenge for practitioners and decision-makers who work to avoid, mitigate and manage environmental change. Here, we illustrate how metaecology – the study of spatial interdependencies among ecological systems through fluxes of organisms, energy, and matter – can enhance understanding and improve managing environmental change at multiple spatial scales. We present several case studies illustrating how the framework has leveraged decision-making in conservation, restoration and risk management. Nevertheless, an explicit incorporation of metaecology is still uncommon in the applied ecology literature, and in action guidelines addressing environmental change. This is unfortunate because the many facets of environmental change can be framed as modifying spatial context, connectedness and dominant regulating processes - the defining features of metaecological systems. Narrowing the gap between theory and practice will require incorporating system-specific realism in otherwise predominantly conceptual studies, as well as deliberately studying scenarios of environmental change.

对于那些努力避免，减轻和管理环境变化的从业者和决策者而言，生态系统的复杂性是一项重大挑战。在这里，我们说明了元生态学（通过生物，能量和物质通量研究生态系统之间的空间相互依赖性）如何能够增进了解并改善在多个空间尺度上对环境变化的管理。我们提供一些案例研究，说明该框架如何在保护，恢复和风险管理中利用决策。然而，在应用的生态学文献和解决环境变化的行动指南中，将元生态学明确地并入仍然是罕见的。这很不幸，因为环境变化的许多方面都可以被定义为修改空间环境，连接性和支配性调节过程-元生态系统的定义特征。缩小理论与实践之间的差距将需要将系统特定的现实主义纳入本来以概念为主的研究中，以及有意地研究环境变化的情景。