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Abstract
Fragmentation of forest area plays an important role in the ongoing discussion of forest dynamics and biological and ecosystem diversity. Among its contributing factors are size, shape, number, and spatial arrangement of forest patches. Several metrics and indexes are in use, predominantly in quantitative landscape ecology. An important area of interest is the assessment of diversity from sample data. This paper presents a sample-based approach to analyzing standard cluster sample data from forest inventories and applying basic considerations of geometrical probabilities. The number and mean size of forest patches can then be estimated under some general assumptions. With this information, a basic characterization of fragmentation is obtained, in a practical example, satisfactory differentiation between subregions of different spatial structure of forest patches could be found. The method also allows the analysis of historic cluster sample data in the absence of corresponding forest cover maps.
Parent Publication
Citation
Kleinn, Christoph. 2000. Assessing forest fragmentation metrics from forest inventory cluster samples. In: Hansen, Mark; Burk, Tom, eds. Integrated tools for natural resources inventories in the 21st century. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-212. St. Paul, MN: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Forest Experiment Station. 292-295.
