A study of habitat fragmentation in Southeastern Brazil using remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) |
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| Institution: | 1. Departamento de Ciências Florestais, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Campus de Botucatu, Cx.P.237-CEP 18603-970, Botucatu, São Paulo, Brazil;2. CEAPLA-IGCE, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Campus de Rio Claro, Cx.P. 178-CEP 13500-230, Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil;1. Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Al Faisaliah, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia;2. Groups of Physics at AAUP, Jenin and at Faculty of Engineering, Atilim University, 06836, Ankara, Turkey;1. Key Laboratory of Special Functional Materials for Ecological Environment and Information, Hebei University of Technology, Ministry of Education, Tianjin 300130, China;2. Institute of Power Source and Ecomaterials Science, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China;1. Departments of Human Ecology and Sociology, Rutgers University, 55 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, United States;2. Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Studies, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia;3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, 75 North Eagleville Road, Storrs, CT 06269-3043, United States;4. Instituto de Ecología Regional, CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina |
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| Abstract: | The purpose of this work was to study fragmentation of forest formations (mesophytic forest, riparian woodland and savannah vegetation (cerrado)) in a 15,774-ha study area located in the Municipal District of Botucatu in Southeastern Brazil (São Paulo State). A land use and land cover map was made from a color composition of a Landsat-5 thematic mapper (TM) image. The edge effect caused by habitat fragmentation was assessed by overlaying, on a geographic information system (GIS), the land use and land cover data with the spectral ratio. The degree of habitat fragmentation was analyzed by deriving: 1. mean patch area and perimeter; 2. patch number and density; 3. perimeter-area ratio, fractal dimension (D), and shape diversity index (SI); and 4. distance between patches and dispersion index (R). In addition, the folowing relationships were modeled: 1. distribution of natural vegetation patch sizes; 2. perimeter-area relationship and the number and area of natural vegetation patches; 3. edge effect caused by habitat fragmentation. The values of R indicated that savannah patches (R = 0.86) were aggregated while patches of natural vegetation as a whole (R = 1.02) were randomly dispersed in the landscape. There was a high frequency of small patches in the landscape whereas large patches were rare. In the perimeter-area relationship, there was no sign of scale distinction in the patch shapes. In the patch number-landscape area relationship, D, though apparently scale-dependent, tends to be constant as area increases. This phenomenon was correlated with the tendency to reach a constant density as the working scale was increased. On the edge effect analysis, the edge-center distance was properly estimated by a model in which the edge-center distance was considered a function of the total patch area and the SI. |
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