QUANTIFICATION OF THE CHANGE IN ECOLOGICAL CONNECTIVITY USING A GIS-BASED MODEL AND CURRENT COMPLEXITY METRICS

Landscape patterns have been undergoing various changes on account of environmental and human factors. These changes affect ecological connectivity of landscapes; therefore existing connections are necessary to maintain sustainable habitats. Connectivity is associated with the diversity and composition of landscape structure. For this reason, when studying ecological connectivity, it is relevant to analyze the changes in diversity, composition, and fragmentation of landscape patterns. This study was conducted in Manisa, Turkey, where the impact of industrialization and urbanization on landscape is very significant. The aim of this study is to assess the changes in ecological connectivity based on an ecological connectivity model and landscape metrics that characterize landscape heterogeneity between 2000 and 2018. Largest Patch Index (LPI), Marginal Entropy (ENT), and Relative Mutual Information (RELMUTINF) were utilized to evaluate the fragmentation, diversity, and composition of the landscape, respectively. As a result of this study, forest loss was found to be 12,970 ha based on 18 years of land change. This has an adverse impact on the ecological connectivity, resulting in a decrease in the high and very high connectivity areas from 71.5% to 53.5%. At the landscape level, the decrease in the LPI from 3.55 to 2.30 shows that fragmentation has increased in Manisa. Since larger patches have higher species diversity in general, a drop in the LPI value indicates that species diversity has decreased over time. The most substantial observed changes include the homogenization of agricultural land and the fragmentation of forests. The results demonstrate that a combination of ecological connectivity and landscape metrics would be highly effective for extensive planning and interpretation.