Land Fragmentation

The Natural Land Pattern Index (NLPI) values and their trends (NLPD) allow evaluating the status and dynamics of fragmentation processes in terms of few key relevant spatial pattern changes in protected areas and in their buffer areas. Six landscape pattern classes have been determined, based on the land cover information of the Climate Change Initiative Land Cover (CCI-LC) map, using an edge width of 300 m (corresponding to one pixel in the CCI-LC map at the equator).

The six pattern classes, which are exemplified in Figure 1, are the following:

NATURAL LAND

• Core: Area of natural/semi-natural land cover that is not adjacent to non-natural land cover, i.e. that is separated by a distance larger than the considered edge width (300 m in the equator) from non-natural land covers.
• Edge: Area of natural/semi-natural land that surrounds the core areas and that is adjacent to non natural land cover.
• Islet: A patch of natural/semi-natural land cover that is too small to contain any core area (all the extent of the patch is closer to nonnatural land cover than the considered edge width).
• Linear feature: All other areas of non-core natural/semi-natural land that do not fall into any of the two non-core classes above. It typically corresponds to small and elongated extents of natural/semi-natural land that extend from outside the edge of a core patch, either connecting or not to another core patch.

NON NATURAL LAND

• Core-perforation: Non-natural land fully enclosed by core area. It corresponds to the non-natural land found within openings of natural/semi-natural land due to anthropogenic (e.g. settlements, shifting cultivation) processes.
• Other non-natural: other areas not falling in any of the previous categories: it includes non-natural areas (cropland, urban) as well as water bodies.