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Shape Irregularity as an Indicator of Forest Biodiversity and Guidelines for Metric Selection

  • Chapter
Patterns and Processes in Forest Landscapes

Abstract

The development of quantitative methods in landscape ecology has provided new perspectives for analysing the distribution of forest biodiversity. The shape of landscape patterns may be linked to the imprint of the factors that have configured the boundaries and affected the diversity of forest patches. There is now available a large number of spatial metrics for characterising the shape of landscape patterns. However, the properties, behaviour and adequacy of these shape metrics for landscape pattern analysis have not been sufficiently evaluated, and there is a risk of potential misuse and arbitrary metric selection. We review the main characteristics and limitations of existing landscape shape metrics, and explore the relationships between shape irregularity metrics and forest landscape biodiversity in the regions of Galicia and Asturias (NW Spain). We analysed data from the Spanish Forest Map, the Third Spanish National Forest Inventory and the Spanish Atlas of Vertebrates at two different levels: forest types with homogenous composition and different total areas, and equally-sized heterogeneous UTM 10 × 10 km cells. We found that shape irregularity metrics were significantly correlated with forest vegetation diversity and with the richness of forest birds, mammals and total vertebrate species. Shape metrics correlated more with forest biodiversity variables than fragmentation metrics. We conclude that shape irregularity metrics may serve as valuable spatial indicators of forest biodiversity at the landscape scale, and suggest that more attention should be paid to shape as a key characteristic of landscape patterns.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agroforestry Engineering, Higher Technical School of Agrarian Engineering, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain

    Santiago Saura

Authors
  1. Santiago Saura
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  2. Olga Torras
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  3. Assu Gil-Tena
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  4. Lucía Pascual-Hortal
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Scienze delle Produzioni Vegetali, University of Bari, Via Amendola 165/A, 70126 Bari BA, Italy

    Raffaele Lafortezza  & Giovanni Sanesi  & 

  2. Dept. Earth, Ecological & Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, 2801 W. Bancroft St., Toledo, OH 43606-3390, USA

    Jiquan Chen

  3. USDA Forest Service Environmental Sciences Research, WFWAR - Stop Code 1113 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Washington DC, 20250-1113, USA

    Thomas R. Crow

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Saura, S., Torras, O., Gil-Tena, A., Pascual-Hortal, L. (2008). Shape Irregularity as an Indicator of Forest Biodiversity and Guidelines for Metric Selection. In: Lafortezza, R., Sanesi, G., Chen, J., Crow, T.R. (eds) Patterns and Processes in Forest Landscapes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8504-8_11

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