Abstract

Rapid urbanization has transformed the spatial pattern of urban land use or cover. This paper concentrates that changed characteristics of landscape structure in the Tancheon Watershed, from 1995 to 2003 were investigated using land cover map. We used FRAGSTATS software to calculate landscape indices to characterize the landscape structure. We found that built up area has been increased rapidly during the study period, while cultivated area and forest area have been decreased rapidly in the same period. From 1995 to 2003, built up area was increased from 19.73% to 39.62% and cultivated area and forest area was decreased 17.60% to 5.97% and 58.31% to 49.41%. Number of patches, mean euclidean nearest-neighbor distance, contagion index, Shannon's diversity index increased considerably from 1995 to 2003, also suggesting the landscape in the study area became more fragmented and heterogeneous. but because of continuously fragmentation, landscape became homogeneity. The study demonstrates that landscape metrics can be a useful indicator in landscape monitoring and landscape assessment.

Keywords

• Landscape metrics;
• Landscape structure change;
• Land Use/Cover;
• Tancheon Watershed;
• FRAGSTATS