Indicators to monitor the structural diversity of landscapes

Abstract

An important level of biodiversity, alongside the diversity of genes and species, is the diversity of ecosystems and landscapes. In this contribution an indicator system is proposed to measure natural diversity (relief, soils, waters), cultural diversity (main land use classes, diversity of land use, ecotones, connectivity) and anthropogenic impacts (fragmentation, hemeroby, protection). The contribution gives an overview of various indicators on landscape diversity and heterogeneity currently used in Germany and Europe. Based on these indicators a complementary system, is presented. The indicators introduced here are derived from regular evaluations of the digital basis landscape model (Basic DLM) of the Authoritative Topographic-Cartographic Information System (ATKIS), the digital land cover model for Germany (LBM-DE) as well as other supplementary data such as the mapping of potential natural vegetation. With the proposed indicators it is possible to estimate cumulative land-use change and its impact on the environmental status and biodiversity, so that existing indicator systems are supplemented with meaningful additional information. Investigations have shown that indicators on forest fragmentation, hemeroby or ecotones can be derived from official geodata. As such geodata is regularly updated, trends in indicator values can be quickly identified. Large regional differences in the distribution of the proposed indicators have been confirmed, thereby revealing deficits and identifying those regions with a high potential for biodiversity. The indicators will be successively integrated into the web-based land-use monitor (http://www.ioer-monitor.de), which is freely available for public use.