Surface metrics: an alternative to patch metrics for the quantification of landscape structure |
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Authors: | Kevin McGarigal Sermin Tagil Samuel A Cushman |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA;(2) Department of Geography, Balikesir University, 10100 Balikesir, Turkey;(3) USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Missoula, MT 59801, USA |
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Abstract: | Modern landscape ecology is based on the patch mosaic paradigm, in which landscapes are conceptualized and analyzed as mosaics
of discrete patches. While this model has been widely successful, there are many situations where it is more meaningful to
model landscape structure based on continuous rather than discrete spatial heterogeneity. The growing field of surface metrology
offers a variety of surface metrics for quantifying landscape gradients, yet these metrics are largely unknown and/or unused
by landscape ecologists. In this paper, we describe a suite of surface metrics with potential for landscape ecological application.
We assessed the redundancy among metrics and sought to find groups of similarly behaved metrics by examining metric performance
across 264 sample landscapes in western Turkey. For comparative purposes and to evaluate the robustness of the observed patterns,
we examined 16 different patch mosaic models and 18 different landscape gradient models of landscape structure. Surface metrics
were highly redundant, but less so than patch metrics, and consistently aggregated into four cohesive clusters of similarly
behaved metrics representing surface roughness, shape of the surface height distribution, and angular and radial surface texture.
While the surface roughness metrics have strong analogs among the patch metrics, the other surface components are largely
unique to landscape gradients. We contend that the surface properties we identified are nearly universal and have potential
to offer new insights into landscape pattern–process relationships.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
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Keywords: | Landscape gradient model Surface patterns Landscape heterogeneity Landscape metrics Landscape pattern |
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