The problem of scale in environmental biology is that pressing problems are often at the scale of decades and entire ecosystems, while measurements are usually constrained to small areas and brief periods. Patterns and process that prevail at small scales do not necessarily prevail at large scales. Consequently, effects at large scales cannot necessarily be computed from local measurements, including almost all experimental manipulations. Examples include habitat loss, fish stock collapses, and contaminant release into the air and the oceans. For a text level synthesis of the topic see

Schneider, D.C. 2009. Quantitative Ecology: Spatial and Temporal Scaling. 2nd Edition. Academic Press