Application of landscape metrics in the evaluation of geodiversity

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present opportunities for using landscape metrics to evaluate geodiversity on individual landscape levels. The research area is located to the west of the Płock Urban and Industrial Agglomeration in Poland. Within this area, hierarchically organized regional units were delimited (Richling, Malinowska, Szumacher 2013). The area is divided into 87 first-level regions, 36 second-level regions and 9 third-level regions. The units have been treated as basic fields for geodiversity analysis purposes using selected landscape measures and metrics, to include area, density, size, edges and diversity (among others, Shannon's Diversity Index (SDI), Shannon's Evenness Index (SEI), domination (D) and redundancy (R)) generated in Patch Analyst v. 5, Fragstats v. 4.0, ArcGIS v.10 and Statistica v. 10 software. Copyright © 2011-2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH.