Geomorphology is the study of how geological formations are accountable for the structure of a landscape (Goodway Landscape).

One fundamental landscape ecology theory grew from MacArthur & Wilson's The Theory of Island Biogeography. This work conceived the biodiversity on islands as the effect of competing effects of settlement from a mainland stock and random extinction. The conceptions of island biogeography were extrapolated from physical islands to abstract plots of habitat by Levins' metapopulation model (Goodway Landscape).

This abstraction spurred the development of landscape ecology by offering preservation biologists a new tool to assess how habitat fragmentation affects population viability. Recent development of landscape ecology owes a good deal to the growth of geographic information systems (GIS) and the handiness of large-extent habitat data (Jeff Zima).