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Rules to write mathematics to clarify metrics such as the land use dynamic degrees

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Abstract

Context

Scientists frequently describe temporal change among land categories by reporting the single land use dynamic degree and the comprehensive land use dynamic degree (CLUDD). The original intention of CLUDD was to compute the annual change percentage, which is the size of annual change expressed as a percentage of the size of the spatial extent. However, the literature’s mathematical descriptions of CLUDD have been unclear, thus readers have imagined various ways to compute CLUDD.

Objectives

Our manuscript clarifies the confusion and offers rules for mathematical notation so that authors can avoid future confusion.

Methods

We examine the literature to see how authors have computed and interpreted the land use dynamic degrees. We illustrate deficiencies of one version of CLUDD. Then we propose equations for the components of annual change percentage.

Results

The literature shows three common misunderstandings. First, some authors add percentages of categories without accounting for the sizes of the categories. Second, other authors compute either double or half of the annual change percentage. Third, many authors interpret CLUDD as if CLUDD were the annual change percentage when they use a version of CLUDD that is not the annual change percentage.

Conclusions

We recommend that the professional community use annual change percentage, its three components and Intensity Analysis to express temporal change among categories. Vague mathematical notation has created confusion concerning the land use dynamic degrees; therefore, we give rules for how to write mathematics clearly in a manner that applies to many professions.

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Acknowledgements

The United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) supported this work via the Long Term Ecological Research network via Grant OCE-1637630 for Plum Island Ecosystems. Key Project of Hunan Provincial Department of Education of China and Recruitment Program of High-end Foreign Experts of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of China funded this work via Grant 17A067 and Grant GWD201543000243. The Edna Bailey Sussman Foundation supplied additional funding via Grant 24546 entitled “Mapping marsh dynamics in coastal ecosystems”. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funders. Jinwei Dong, Wenhui Kuang and anonymous reviewers supplied constructive feedback that helped to improve this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA

    Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr., Wenle Jiang, Sam Khallaghi, Youtao Lin & Su Ye

  2. Coastal and Ocean Management Institute, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Jinliang Huang

  3. Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jiyuan Liu

  4. College of City and Tourism, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, 421002, China

    Bin Quan

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  1. Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr.
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  2. Jinliang Huang
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  3. Wenle Jiang
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  7. Bin Quan
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Correspondence to Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr..

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Pontius, R.G., Huang, J., Jiang, W. et al. Rules to write mathematics to clarify metrics such as the land use dynamic degrees. Landscape Ecol 32, 2249–2260 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0584-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0584-x

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