DESCRIPTION

r.forestfrag Computes the forest fragmentation following the methodology proposed by Riitters et. al (2000). See http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss2/art3/ for a detailed explanation.

It follows a “sliding window” algorithm with overlapping windows. The amount of forest and its occurence as adjacent forest pixels within fixed- area "moving-windows" surrounding each forest pixel is measured. The window size is user-defined. The result is stored at the location of the center pixel. Thus, a pixel value in the derived map refers to "between-pixel" fragmentation around the corresponding forest location.

Let Pf be the proportion of pixels in the window that are forested. Define Pff (strictly) as the proportion of all adjacent (cardinal directions only) pixel pairs that include at least one forest pixel, for which both pixels are forested. Pff (roughly) estimates the conditional probability that, given a pixel of forest, its neighbor is also forest. [...] the classification model [...] identifies six fragmentation categories:

(1) interior, for which Pf = 1.0
(2) patch, Pf < 0.4
(3) transitional, 0.4 < Pf < 0.6
(4) edge, Pf > 0.6 and Pf - Pff < 0
(5) perforated, Pf > 0.6 and Pf – Pff > 0
(6) undetermined, Pf > 0.6 and Pf = Pff

NOTES

The moving window size is user-defined (default=3), but must be given as a odd number. if the user gives an even number, the number is silently reduced to the nearest odd number < user-defined number.

To avoid edge effects at the border of the raster layer the user can choose to have the output raster trimmed with a number of raster cells equal to 1/2 * the size of the moving window.

If the user selects to run r.report on the output map, but has selected to leave the output untrimmed, r.report will be run on a copy of the output map that is trimmed.

SEE ALSO

This addon is based on the r.forestfrag.sh addon, adapted to make it compatible with GRASS 7.0. It introduces the option to change the moving window size and unlike the original addon, it respects the region (there is still the option to set the region to the input raster). This addon will not work on GRASS 6.4, please use the above mentioned addon.

AUTHORS

Emmanuel Sambale: Author original script
Stefan Sylla: Revised / updated
Paulo van Breugel: Revised / updated for GRASS 7.0, added the option to determine moving window size.
Contact: paulo at ecodiv.org

REFERENCES

Riitters, K., J. Wickham, R. O'Neill, B. Jones, and E. Smith. 2000. Global-scale patterns of forest fragmentation. Conservation Ecology 4(2): 3. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss2/art3/

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