A functional perspective on the analysis of land use and land cover data in ecology |
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Authors: | Federico Riva Scott E. Nielsen |
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Affiliation: | 1.Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, 751 GSB 9007 - 116 St NW, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H1 Canada ;2.University of Alberta, 701 General Services Building 9007 - 116 St NW, Edmonton, ABAB T6G 2H1 Canada |
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Abstract: | Assessments of large-scale changes in habitat are a priority for management and conservation. Traditional approaches use land use and land cover data (LULC) that focus mostly on “structural” properties of landscapes, rather than “functional” properties related to specific ecological processes. Here, we contend that designing functional analyses of LULC can provide important and complementary information to traditional, structural analyses. We substantiate this perspective with an example of functional changes in habitat due to industrial anthropogenic footprints in Alberta’s boreal forest, where there has been little overall forest loss (~ 6% structural change), but high levels of functional change (up to 93% functional change) for species’ habitat, biodiversity, and wildfire ignition. We discuss the methods needed to achieve functional LULC analyses, when they are most appropriate to add to structural assessments, and conclude by providing recommendations for analyses of LULC in a future of increasingly high-resolution, dynamic remote sensing data.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01434-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
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Keywords: | Functional landscape analyses Geographic information systems Remote sensing Scale of analysis Scale of phenomenon Scale of sampling |
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