McGarigal, Kevin; Marks, Barbara J. 1995. FRAGSTATS: spatial pattern analysis program for quantifying landscape structure. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-351. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 122 p. This report describes a program, FRAGSTATS, developed to quantify landscape structure. FRAGSTATS offers a comprehensive choice of landscape ...

Version 3 The main metrics (Connectivity) Background.–Connectivity refers to the degree to which a landscape facilitates or impedes ecological flows (e.g., the movement of organisms among habitat patches and therefore the rate of movement among local populations in a metapopulation). An abrupt change in the Connectivity of the landscape, for example, as might be caused by habitat loss and fragm...

State of Knowledge The loss of habitat is a leading cause of the loss of biodiversity that we are seeing in what is being called the ‘sixth great extinction.’ Landscape ecology is the study of the spatial pattern of landscapes. Although the term has been used since the early 1900’s, it has only become a field of study in its own right with the technological advancement of remote sensing through...

Metrics that quantify habitat connectivity and fragmentation in landscape ecology are examined, as well as the relations between them and their interpretation. The radius of gyration, defined here as the root-mean-square distance of habitat patches from the center of the habitat, has special significance from an ecological point of view that other metrics lack. This metric has been incorrectly ...