Turning to the problem of place for environmental inquiry, this chapter examines the role of scale in ecosystems. It investigates the ways that both individual species and research sites are framed as discrete and self-contained units by drawing from scholarship in rhetorical theory and the environmental humanities. Scale plays an important role in framing ecosystems, from understanding processes like evolution to the relationship between global climate change and local environmental problems. Taken together, this chapter investigates how spatial rhetoric influences environmental inquiry.