Particularities of Forest Dynamics Using Higuchi Dimension. Parâng Mountains as a Case Study

Adrian Gabriel Simion,Herbert Franz Jelinek,Daniel Peptenatu,Iulia Daniela Nedelcu,Ion Andronache,Vlad Loghin,Cristian Mihnea Popa,Marian Marin,Helmut Ahammer

doi:10.3390/fractalfract5030096

Adrian Gabriel Simion, Herbert Franz Jelinek + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/fractalfract5030096

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Abstract

The legal or illegal losses and the natural disturbance regime of forest areas in Romania generate major imbalances in territorial systems. The main purpose of the current research was to examine the dynamics of the complexity of forests under the influence of forest loss but also to compare the applicability of Higuchi dimension. In this study, two fractal algorithms, Higuchi 1D (H1D) and Higuchi 2D (H2D), were used to determine qualitative and quantitative aspects based on images obtained from a Geographic Information System (GIS) database. The H1D analysis showed that the impact of forest loss has led to increased fragmentation of the forests, generating a continuous increase in the complexity of forest areas. The H2D analysis identified the complexity of forest morphology by the relationship between each pixel and the neighboring pixels from analyzed images, which allowed us to highlight the local characteristics of the forest loss. The H1D and H2D methods showed that they have the speed and simplicity required for forest loss analysis. Using this methodology complementary to GIS analyses, a relevant status of how forest loss occurred and their impact on tree-cover dynamics was obtained.

Highlights

Forest pressure is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary society, generating major imbalances in both natural components of territorial systems and anthropic ones.The increasing need for wood as raw material, the need for agricultural land, and in general, population growth, has generated increasing pressure on forests [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The raster image processing has provided a detailed understanding of the forest area evolution in the Parâng Mountains (Figure 2), an evolution determined by legal and illegal forest exploitation, as well as by the context provided by forest management policies
We can see the increasing values of the loss surfaces between 2007 and 2012, when the legislation was amended to facilitate the exploitation of the restituted forest from the Fractal Fract. 2021, 5, x FOR PEER REVIEW

Summary

Introduction

Forest pressure is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary society, generating major imbalances in both natural components of territorial systems and anthropic ones.The increasing need for wood as raw material, the need for agricultural land, and in general, population growth, has generated increasing pressure on forests [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Forest pressure is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary society, generating major imbalances in both natural components of territorial systems and anthropic ones. Forest area has declined, the global rate of global deforestation has slowed down by more than 50% because of the implementation of a specific forestry management policy by some states. The real forest exploitation trend and area are different from the official statistical reporting by recognized institutions because of the defective systems of recording forest data. The analysis performed on satellite images on the deforestation have highlighted a series of spatial-temporal peculiarities that require new methodological approaches. The result of the analysis highlighted important differences in the deforestation

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