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The Influence Of Matrix Contrast On Species Richness In Fragmented Landscapes, Ian Reider
The Influence Of Matrix Contrast On Species Richness In Fragmented Landscapes, Ian Reider
Masters Theses
Habitat destruction is the leading threat to biodiversity worldwide, causing once continuous landscapes to become fragmented and isolated and harming the persistence of biodiversity. Our goal was to determine how species richness in fragmented forest landscapes is influenced by the vegetation density of the surrounding matrix. We gathered existing studies of fragmented landscapes with Species Area Relationship (SAR) data and analyzed the landscape vegetation in each study site using satellite imagery in ArcGIS. We investigated to see how contrast between vegetation density in matrix versus forested habitat areas correlated to the strength of the SAR for the 45 study landscapes …