Characterizing the Landscape Structure of Urban Wetlands Using Terrain and Landscape Indices

Olusola O. Festus, Wei Ji and Opeyemi A. Zubair
Additional contact information
Olusola O. Festus: Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA
Wei Ji: Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA
Opeyemi A. Zubair: Department of History, Sociology, Geography & GIS, Tarleton State University, Stephenville, TX 76401, USA

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-25

Abstract: Several studies have shown human impacts on urban wetlands. These impacts are mostly studied at broad scales, which may generalize and aggregate important information needed for landscape quantification or terrain analysis. This situation can weakly or inappropriately address the structure of wetland landscapes, thus affecting the assessment of the quantities and qualities of terrestrial wetland habitats. To address these issues for urban wetland dynamics, this study proposes the use of landscape and terrain indices to characterize the landscape structure of urban wetlands at a fine scale in order to assess its usefulness in contributing to wildlife sustainability. To achieve this goal, secondary terrain attribute data are integrated with an object-based satellite image classification at the wetland and watershed level. The result reveals a general swell in wetland coverage at the watershed level. Further analysis shows the size and shape complexities, and edge irregularities are increased significantly at the patch level but slightly at the watershed level. Terrain analysis further reveals a potential increase in wetness and decrease in stream power vulnerability for most of the major wetlands under study. These results suggest that terrain and landscape indices are effective in characterizing the structure of urban wetlands that supports socio-ecological sustainability.

Keywords: wetland; watershed; landscape metrics; landscape structure; terrain analysis; terrestrial wetland habitat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/1/29/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/1/29/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:1:p:29-:d:310516

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().