Utility of landscape mosaics and boundaries in forest conservation decision making in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil

Effects of Urban Sprawl on Forest Conservation in a Metropolitan Water Source Area

“…(Zeng and Wu, 2005), calculated by the sum for boundary type Length/Edge Cumulative total boundaries length (ED) FRAGSTATS ® Density -ED between the forest patch i and human-related neighboring patch k , calculated in meters by the sum for boundary type (Mcgarigal and Marks, 1995;Zeng and Wu, 2005) Table 1 -Criteria used to assess the forest conservation in historic landscapes and future scenarios. Modified from Hardt et al (2013aHardt et al ( , 2014. Tabela 1 -Critérios de avaliação da conservação da floresta nas paisagens históricas e nos cenários futuros.…”

“…According to principles of landscape ecology, the processes associated with environmental conservation can be inferred from patterns of vegetation composition and distribution and land uses (Turner et al, 2001). Based on this approach, structural patterns can be assessed by using landscape metrics or indexes (McGarigal and Marks, 1995), such as quality of the forests based on size, shape, isolation, succession stage, and anthropic boundaries (Zeng and Wu, 2005;Hardt et al, 2013aHardt et al, , 2014.…”

A procedure of landscape services assessment based on mosaics of patches and boundaries

“…Our procedure provides new insights into ways to integrate the relationships between patches and their boundaries in landscape assessment and builds on the methods developed by De Pablo et al (2012), Hardt et al (2013), Hersperger (2006) and Rold an et al (2006). The advantage of this procedure is the integration of the goods and services provided by the patches and those resulting from the patterns of boundaries within landscape mosaics.…”

“…These values can be regarded as equivalent to the landscape and land use functions used by other authors to assess landscape goods and services (De Groot, 1992;Meyer and Grabaum, 2008). The approach developed here could easily be used to incorporate the information provided by the landscape indices noted above (see Hardt et al, 2013) and to convert it to environmental values.…”

“…Several studies have demonstrated the usefulness of landscape mosaics in environmental planning and management (Bertolo et al, 2015;Forman, 1990;Hardt et al, 2013;Hersperger, 2006;Kuttner et al, 2014;Rold an et al, 2006;Simmering et al, 2006;Wiens et al, 1993), and numerous mosaic-based metrics are used to describe landscapes (De Pablo et al, 2012;Farina, 2000;Forman, 1995;Hanski, 2001;Hardt et al, 2013;Kuussaari et al, 2009;Noss, 1990;Zeng and Ben Wu, 2005). However, decision-making in environmental planning is based on the values of land use patches without regard to the interactions across their boundaries.…”