Abstract
The mountain ecosystems face significant damage from deforestation and environmental forest changes. We investigated the evolution of tree types of cover areas, deforested areas and total deforested areas from Curvature Carpathians using Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix and fractal analysis. The forest dynamics mapping was one of the main objectives of this study and it was carried out using multiple fractal and GLCM indices. We approached the analysis of satellite forest images by calculation of four fractal indices such as Pyramid dimension, Cube Counting Dimension, Fractal Fragmentation-Compaction Index and Tug-of-War lacunarity. We also calculated fractal dimension because it is an index of complexity comparing how the detail in a pattern changes with the scale at which it is measured. Fractal dimension is useful for estimation of irregularity or roughness of fractal and natural objects that do not conform to Euclidian geometry. While the fractal dimension quantifies how much space is occupied, the Tug-of-War lacunarity complements fractal dimension with its ability to quantify how space is occupied. Analysis was further supplemented by the Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix analysis because it quantifies spatial probability distributions of gray level values between pixel pairs within an image. The calculated Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix features included Angular Second Moment, Contrast, Correlation, Inverse Difference Moment and Entropy. Such comprehensive analysis has the advantage of combining fractal analysis that extracts quantitative information about the morphological complexity of the image with the spatial distribution of the gray pixel intensities as calculated by the co-occurrence features provided by Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix. Evolution of deforested areas, expansion of agricultural land and the increased demand for quality timber have affected the forests ecosystems and, the regional sustainable development of local communities.
Highlights
In Earth ecosystems, human activity influences the biodiversity, climate change and a natural order of ecosystems by inducing new pressure elements such as habitats restraining, increasing the species competitivity and migration because of lack of food resources—nourishment
We investigated the spatio-temporal evolution of tree cover areas, yearly deforested areas and total deforested areas, as a sum of all yearly deforested areas in the Curvature Carpathian forests in Romania by analysis of Landsat archive data from Global Forest Change (GFC) by fractal and Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) algorithms
The use of fractal analysis including 2D Pyramid Dimension, 3D Cube Counting, Fractal Fragmentation Index (FFI) and ΛT−o−W allowed us to quantify the degree of complexity of tree cover areas and deforested areas
Summary
In Earth ecosystems, human activity influences the biodiversity, climate change and a natural order of ecosystems by inducing new pressure elements such as habitats restraining, increasing the species competitivity and migration because of lack of food resources—nourishment. The forests of Romania have been studied using novel methodologies, including fractal analysis [16,19,20,21] of satellite images [11,18,22,23] The results of these studies indicate that forests of Romanian Carpathians have suffered damage, such as diminution of forest areas and reduction of biodiversity [1,24,25,26]. Because many previous studies focused on changes in forested regions, we took a more comprehensive insight by using fractal and GLCM algorithms The advantages of such an approach result from the compatibility of these methods to provide an added analytical value. Saulsgtaoirniatbhilmitys2.0T19h, e11a, 6d9v27antages of such an approach result from the compatibility of these metho3dosf 1to provide an added analytical value
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