Assessing Landscape Fragmentation: A Composite Indicator

Andrea De Montis, Vittorio Serra, Amedeo Ganciu and Antonio Ledda
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Andrea De Montis: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Sassari, 07100 Sassari, Italy
Vittorio Serra: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Sassari, 07100 Sassari, Italy
Amedeo Ganciu: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Sassari, 07100 Sassari, Italy
Antonio Ledda: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Sassari, 07100 Sassari, Italy

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 22, 1-23

Abstract: The assessment and management of landscape fragmentation (LF), i.e., the subdivision of the habitat into smaller and more isolated patches, can benefit from the adoption of a composite indicator explaining, in a unique measure, the various concerns involved. However, the use of composite indicators may be affected by lack of data, subjectivity in algorithm design, and oversimplification connected to reduction to just one index. In these cases, the findings obtained might not provide the researcher with reliable information. In this paper, we design and apply the Composite Indicator of Landscape Fragmentation (CILF), a metric resuming three indicators concerning the effect on LF of transport and mobility infrastructures, human settlements, and patch density per se. The application concerns the measurement of LF spatial pattern and dynamics from 2003 to 2008 of 51 landscape units in the island of Sardinia (Italy). We considered a complete spatial data set, chose the generalized geometric mean as aggregation algorithm, and verified its robustness via sensitivity analysis of the results. We found that, in 2003 and 2008, the CILF spatial pattern shows higher values in coastal areas and has varied randomly, i.e., without a consistent tendency to converge to, or diverge from, a mean value. Overall, we demonstrate that the CILF is a powerful instrument for monitoring LF in Sardinia and advocate that it can be further implemented, following the same methodological framework, by extending the pool of indicators considered and assessing a weighted version of the composite indicator.

Keywords: composite indicators; decisional processes; landscape fragmentation; normalization; aggregation; sensitivity analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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