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A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF THE MONTREAL PROCESS INDICATORS OF FOREST FRAGMENTATION FOR THE UNITED STATES
Citation:
Riitters, K. H., J D. Wickham, AND J. W. Coulston. A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF THE MONTREAL PROCESS INDICATORS OF FOREST FRAGMENTATION FOR THE UNITED STATES. ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT 91(1-3):257-276, (2004).
Impact/Purpose:
The objective of this task is to produce land-cover and related products that are needed to meet Annual Performance Goals (APG) under GPRA Goals Clean Air, Clean Water, and Healthy and Safe Communities, and to meet the critical needs of EPA Regional Offices.
Description:
As part of the 2003 U.S. Report on Sustainable Forests, four metrics of forest fragmentation patch size, edge amount, inter-patch contrast - were measured within 142,602 non overlapping 56.25 km2 analysis units on land-cover maps derived from satellite imagery for the 48 conterminous States. The perimeter of a typical forest patch is about 100 meters from the perimeter of its nearest neighbor, except when there is not much forest, in which case that distance is 200-300 meters. A typical analysis unit has from 10-40 percent as much forest edge as it could possibly have, given the amount of forest present. Most analysis units contain a large number of patches that are less than on hectare in size, and about 10 percent contain one or more 2,000 to 5,000 hectare patches. Forest often defines the background landscape, and patch contrast is generally either very high or very low in eastern regions and intermediate in western regions. Many research needs were identified by this experimental analysis of available data and metrics.