Landscape Pattern Metrics: An Empirical Study from 2-D to 3-D

Abstract

Analysis of landscape patterns, as an important means of studying landscape ecological functions and processes, is a key part of landscape ecology. The traditional patch-corridor-matrix paradigm, ignoring the differences between real three-dimensional (3-D) landscapes and two-dimensional (2-D) landscape maps, quantifies and describes 2-D landscape maps using landscape pattern metrics. Such simplification of the real landscape will lead to differences between 2-D landscape pattern metrics and real values, especially in mountainous areas. This study seeks to examine whether these differences are significant in natural landscape patterns. Fourteen small watersheds in a mountainous area were selected as sample landscape units. Two metrics at the patch level, five metrics at the class level, and four metrics at the landscape level were chosen as representative metrics. The results indicated that there were significant differences between the 2-D and 3-D landscape pattern metrics at the patch level, landscape level, and class level. We interpret the differences as errors in the 2-D metrics. The errors depend on the metric and the landscape type, and the errors for different landscape types were inconsistent. Whether these errors affect further interpretation of the role of pattern in landscape ecology remains uncertain.