Remote Sensing and Cartographic Diversity of Spatial Structure in Pomerania Landscape

The spatial structure of a landscape is the subject of many scientific studies. It may be analyzed with various research methods and tools, criteria and indices, sources of data and various components.
From the ecological point of view, the element that differentiate the spatial structure of the landscape may be a land cover. The knowledge about the land cover and its quantization for a defined spatial unit applying indices used in the landscape ecology, makes it possible to understand and find out relations between man and environment. It is also very important for planning activities in this area.

Research concerning the analysis of spatial landscape structure was done in the area of Pomerania. The analyzed area of almost 50 000 square km is surrounded by natural boarders. There are the Odra River on the west, the Baltic Sea on the north, the Vistula River on the East, and the Notec River and the Warta River on the south. The basic unit where the chosen analysis took place was a borough (commune). The total number of boroughs was 258.

For this defined basic unit landscape structure was analyzed with the application of the following landscape measures: the number of land cover categories (NumC), the number of patches (NumP), total length of edges (TE), a shape index (MSI), Shannon diversity index (SDI) and NDVI and a fragmentation index. The first five indices were calculated on the basis of CORINE Land Cover database from 2006, and the last two indices (NDVI and fragmentation index) on the basis of Landsat satellite imagery from 2003.

All spatial landscape measures, and the correlation among indices were defined for each borough. Moreover, the bonitation of boroughs took place taking into consideration resultant, total of the landscape diversity. The goal of the study is the remote sensing and cartographic valorization of boroughs in Pomerania taking into consideration the spatial diversity of the landscape.

The study was done with the technology of geographical information system. The paper is supported by the Grant of Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education No N N304 220835.