Landscape Pattern Metrics at Fort Benning, Georgia
Abstract
The Department of Defense (DoD) has established ecosystem management as its approach to management of military lands. The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) Ecosystem Management Program (SEMP) was established in December 1997 to help address critical deficiencies in knowledge which prohibit the DoD from fully achieving this goal (Kress 2001). One component of the SEMP is the Ecosystem Characterization and Monitoring Initiative (ECMI). The objectives of the ECMI, described in Kress (2001), include the development and implementation of monitoring and characterization activities that can support the assessment of relationships between land use and management, and ecosystem structure, function, and pattern. Fort Benning, Georgia, was established as the first test site for implementation of the objectives of the SEMP. Understanding a landscape requires adequately defining the physical characteristics of the terrain (topographic parameters such as elevation, slope, aspect; geology and soil composition; hydrology, etc.); the processes acting on that terrain (meteorology, human activity, etc.); and the composition of the landscape (land cover). However, it is not enough to simply characterize the variety and amounts of land cover types that exist in a landscape. Characterizing the structure or pattern of the occurrences of the individual land cover types (and how they are interspersed) in the landscape is also important. Over the past few years the examination of landscape patterns (also called landscape ecology) has resulted in the development of a large suite of metrics to define landscape patterns and structure. This paper presents calculations of landscape metrics for the Fort Benning study area.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA408457
Entities
People
- Mark R. Graves
- Scott G. Bourne
Organizations
- Engineer Research and Development Center