Landscapemetrics: Landscape Pattern Metrics for Categorical Maps

Landscapemetrics is an R package for calculating landscape metrics for categorical map patterns. It reimplements common metrics from FRAGSTATS and adds new ones from current literature, supporting 'terra' SpatRaster objects. The package was authored by Maximilian H. K. Hesselbarth and provides utility functions for visualization and metric development.

Use Cases

• Quantifying habitat fragmentation based on categorical land cover maps.
• Comparing landscape structure across regions based on metrics like patch size and shape.
• Developing new spatial metrics using the package's provided building blocks.
• Visualizing spatial patches and their characteristics for ecological reporting.

Strengths

• Package reimplements established metrics from the widely-used FRAGSTATS software.
• Supports modern 'terra' SpatRaster objects as input for geospatial analysis.
• Includes utility functions for visualizing patches and selecting metrics.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Maximilian H. K. Hesselbarth

Collection Method

Software package for calculating metrics from user-provided raster data.