Abstract

Landscape is a heterogeneous land area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems that is repeated in similar form throughout. A variety of landscape metrics have been developed to allow quantitative assessment of a landscape and its level of fragmentation. Present study addresses the forest landscape assessment using landscape metrics. The landscape metrics analyzed are contagion index, forest fragmentation index, patch richness index, perimeter area ratio and similarity index. These metrics are important for the landscape level ecological assessment. In this Geospatial techniques include GIS, remote sensing and FRAGSTAT methods are proving to be powerful tools to assess the forest landscape assessment. Landscape indices can be divided into groups that is patch-level metrics, which are measures of individual patches and their spatial character or context, class-level metrics, which are measures of one patch type (class) existing in the landscape and can either be derived by averaging or calculated separately, so that they reflect an aggregate property of the patches in a particular cover type, while landscape-level metrics are measures extending over the whole of a landscape and are similarly derived by averaging or calculated using all the patches in all classes. The present study is carried out in Neyyar wildlife sanctuary located in the part of the mega biodiversity hot spot of Western Ghats, Kerala. The utilization of landscape principles coupled with remote sensing and geographical information system help characterize fragmentation, disturbance regimes and biodiversity. The result of this study and analysis play key role for the formulation and implementation of forest conservation and management strategies

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