Species at all ecological levels of organization (individual, population, community) are affected by landscape spatial heterogeneity. In turn, such spatial heterogeneity is modified by the synergistic interactions among natural disturbances and global change (climate, land-use change). The direct and indirect effects of these natural and anthropogenic disturbances on species distributions can range from local population extirpation to global species extinction. Hence, a critical step in ecological studies is to quantify how landscape spatial heterogeneity affects species distribution. With the current advancements of remotely sensed sensors and availability of atlases, we can investigate species responses to environmental change at several spatial scales. To do so, it is important to determine the key spatial scales where spatial heterogeneous indeed affect species ecology. Yet in patchy and fragmented landscapes, species movement can be impede by the intervening land cover types. It such cases, spatial and spatio-temporal network statistics can be used to quantify the degree of connectivity in such heterogeneous and fragmented landscapes. Here I will present how insights from spatial ecology and spatially-explicit modeling can help to understand species responses to global change.