Quality evaluation of farmland landscape boundary based on GIS

Abstract

Landscape boundaries are the heterogeneous landscapes among the relatively homogeneous landscapes on the given temporal-spatial scale. Quality evaluation of landscape boundary is an important component of landscape boundary research. Moreover, it is a research hotspot of Landscape Ecology. The boundary characteristic of farmland landscape influences indirectly ecological process and farmland productivity. This research is aimed to explore the quality evaluation of the farmland landscape boundary on the basis of the original data, with Geographic Information System (GIS) combined with field investigation, and Fujian's Yongtai County is taken as the study area. The research covers four aspects. First, extract correlative thematic maps with the aid of ArcGIS and ENVI, put them under spatial analysis and define farmland landscape unit and acquire unit attribute data. Second, the major measure indexes of farmland landscape boundary are selected, such as patch shape index, patch acreage index and patch contagion index. Third, supported by Landscape Ecology methods, this research puts forward an integrated index reflecting the condition of farmland landscape boundary, and outputs the grade maps of farmland landscape boundary quality on the study area. Finally, a corresponding evaluation map is drawn up, and according to the show of the map, the regional character of farmland landscape boundary quality is analyzed. The results indicate that the farmland landscape boundary quality in the research region is medium and the integrated quality index of farmland landscape boundary could preferably reflect spatial variability of the farmland use landscape.