Landscape Ecology is a relatively new branch of ecology that explicitly considers spatial pattern as an independent variable to explain ecological function of ecosystems. Some  major organizing ideas of stream ecology have done just this. The river continuum concept and its corollaries link community structure and organic matter processing to longitudinal pattern. Nutrient spiraling superimposes nutrient cycling on this template. Patch dynamics has had a strong play in stream ecology via studies of interacting surface and hyporheic zones and lateral exchanges of materials and energy with riparian and floodplain subsystems. These same spatial connections have helped resolve food web structure in space and disturbance theory has added a dynamic, temporal dimension. Landscape ideas of boundaries and ecotones and ecological filters have been enriched greatly by studies of streams and rivers. Hierarchy theory, fractal analysis, and network theory have been used effectively by stream ecologists to advance understanding of stream structure and function and to properly resolve the role of streams as functional elements of larger terrestrial landscapes. Because of their rapid turnover, distinct heterogeneity, marked spatial orientation, and well known geomorphic underpinnings, streams are ideal systems for synthetic and analytic research that will further advance landscape ecology.