5 Using Landscape-level metrics

Landscape-level metrics report one value for the entire landscape. As with class-level metrics you can summarize some of the metrics at the landscape scale by mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation. For example lsm_l_area_mn(auguasta) gives the mean area of ALL the patches in the landscape (thus the class and ’id fields in the table will show NA).

Metrics specific to the landscape level include the joinent metric. It measures complexity of landscape pattern. Read it about it and try it out! This is one where the default neighbourhood rule is 4, not 8.

lsm_l_joinnet(augusta)

Another group of metrics unique to the landscape-level are diversity metrics. These are akin to species diversity measures for communities, but instead count cover types (classes) as equivalent to species.

Read the help files and compare the output for the following functions:

lsm_l_pr() lsm_l_prd() lsm_l_rpr() lsm_l_shdi() lsm_l_shei() lsm_l_sidi() lsm_l_siei()

Finally you can quantify the total core and total edge area in your landscape.