Local populations in patches close to each other is influenced by similar environmental conditions. When increasing the distance between the patches the local population will experience less synchronized environments.Since the degree of synchrony of environmental conditions is important for the overall extinction risk it is probably likewise important to include distance dependence in environmental variation when studying environmental forcing on spatially subdivided populations. Thus, we investigate the importance of including such distance dependent synchrony when studying coloured environmental variation applied to populations in explicit landscapes. We will introduce a method based on controlling the phases when generating 1/f-noise by FFT. The results showed large differences between fast and slow density regulation responses in populations. Extinction risk was several magnitudes larger when including distance dependent synchrony compared to randomly distributing environmental time series. There was one exception; it is not necessary to include distance dependent synchrony for landscape with random patch distribution.

Synchrony; distance dependence; landscape; patch configuration; noise colour; extinction risk; environmental noise; metapopulation