Reporting on European forest fragmentation: Standardised indices and web map services

This paper responds to the need of improved reporting and data sharing on forest fragmentation as underlined in the biodiversity policy context and in GEOSS societal benefit areas. The fragmentation of a focal ecosystem is conceptualized from a landscape pattern characterization based on three publically available landscape models (Morphological Spatial Pattern Application of the GUIDOS free software, Landscape Mosaic Pattern, Conefor Sensinode free software) that were partly combined. A set of indices were derived and organized into five main families: two indices on general landscape composition, four on forest fragmentation pattern, four on forest morphological shapes with their respective edge interface mosaic context (four indices) and three indices on connectivity. A concise array-based mathematical formulation of the indices allows their unambiguous semantic description and easier implementation. The number of indices in each family can be reduced depending on users focus and semantics. The indices were computed by using the European-wide 25m resolution forest map of year 2006 and the broad scale Corine land cover multitemporal data as inputs maps. A snap-shot of the European-wide data available on the status and trends of forest fragmentation over the 1990-2006 time period is shortly illustrated. Furthermore, a dedicated pattern web map viewer was developed using existing tools, open source software and web standard technologies to access, view and query on line the index based maps (static GIS data layers) from the European Forest Data Centre (EFDAC).

ESTREGUIL Christine;  CAUDULLO Giovanni;  DE RIGO Daniele;  WHITMORE Ceri James;  SAN-MIGUEL-AYANZ Jesus; 

2013-03-01

IEEE

JRC75604

http://www.earthzine.org/themes-page/forest-resource-information/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC75604,