Abstract
This study uses fractal analysis to quantify the spatial changes of forest resources caused by an increase of deforested areas. The method introduced contributes to the evaluation of forest resources being under significant pressure from anthropogenic activities. The pressure on the forest resources has been analyzed for Maramureș County, one of the most deforested counties in Romania. In order to evaluate this, the deforested areas were calculated for the period of 2001–2014, by using the Global Forest Change 2000–2014 database. The Fractal Fragmentation Index (FFI) and Fixed Grid 2D Lacunarity (FG2DL) were used to quantify the degree of fragmentation and dispersion of the forested areas, and thereby the extent to which a forest area is affected by deforestation. The process of quantifying the pressure on forested areas included the creation of a database for the period of 2000–2014 containing economic activities (turnover) related to woody recourses, important indicators of forest exploitation. Taken together, the results obtained indicate a dramatic increase in deforested areas (over 19,122 ha in total for the period of analysis), in Maramureș County.
Highlights
Forest areas represent one of the most important and complex terrestrial ecosystems
In the previous studies by Sengupta and Vinoy [34,40], lacunarity was used to underline the degree of heterogeneity of the deforested areas. We present another method to determine lacunarity, namely Fixed Grid 2D Lacunarity (FG2DL), which is fast and efficient in processing time series of high-resolution image data from the Landsat archive and is expected to be a highly useful method in relation to the emerging data archives of Senitnel-2 data
The identification and research of the causes which determine the expansion of the deforested areas is a major concern both for researchers and for decision-makers, due to the complex relations established between forests and the other components of the territorial systems
Summary
Forest areas represent one of the most important and complex terrestrial ecosystems. Management of forest areas is one of the greatest challenges for policy-makers, faced with significant pressure exerted on forest resources by various sectors of the economy, which require a growing wood volume [2]. The forest, by its products, has several functions with implications for the economy, the environment, and society. This multi-functionality defines the key role forested areas play in the fight against pollution, poverty, and environmental protection. This role is recognized by a number of Forests 2017, 8, 25; doi:10.3390/f8010025 www.mdpi.com/journal/forests
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